II 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL 


AS  A  CRITIC 


BY 


JOSEPH    J.  REILLY 

M.A.  (COLUMBIA)  ;  PH.D.  (YALE) 

FORMERLY  INSTRUCTOR  IN  ENGLISH  AT  THE    COLLEGE   OF  THE  CITY   OF 

NEW  YORK 
SOMETIME  FELLOW  IN  ENGLISH  AT  YALE  UNIVERSITY 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

ZTbe  IRntcfeerbocfeer  press 

1915 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 

BY 
JOSEPH   J.    REILLY 


Ubc  ftnicfterbocfcer  f>re0«,  "Hew  Both 


en 


ffo 

MY   MOTHER 

AND   THE    MEMORY    Of 

MY   FATHER 


31 4822 


PREFACE 

WITH  the  steady  growth  of  interest  in  Ameri 
can  literature  the  position  of  James  Russell 
Lowell  as  the  greatest  of  our  men  of  letters  has 
been  pretty  generally  conceded.  The  Vision  of 
Sir  Launfal  is  regarded  as  a  classic  and  studied  in 
our  schools;  The  First  Snowfall,  The  Dandelion, 
An  Incident  in  a  Railroad  Car,  typical  of  Lowell 
the  poet,  in  his  tenderness  of  sentiment,  his  appre 
ciation  of  nature,  his  didacticism,  are  household 
poems  among  us.  That  sheaf  of  essays  in  lighter 
mood  which  numbers  My  Garden  Acquaintance 
and  A  Good  Word  for  Winter,  wins  for  Lowell  in 
many  minds  a  place  by  the  side  of  Thackeray's 
"  Saint  Charles."  This  same  Lowell  had  thoughtful 
things  to  say  on  public  libraries,  on  democracy, 
and  in  the  heat  of  the  Civil  War  many  other 
things  to  say — some  thoughtful,  others  not.  Of 
his  prose  his  most  noteworthy  work  was  devoted 
to  criticism.  As  a  man  of  letters  he  was  poet, 
essayist,  student  of  politics,  and  critic,  and  on 
each  of  these  many  sides  he  deserves  consideration. 
His  has  been  regarded  as  the  foremost  position 


vi  PREFACE 

in  the  history  of  American  criticism  and  he  has 
been  compared,  and  sometimes  without  disparage 
ment,  to  Matthew  Arnold.  Rarely  in  a  modern- 
day  volume  of  criticism  or  literary  history  does  one 
fail  to  find  an  apt  quotation  from  Lowell.  Obvi 
ously  his  critical  work  is  known  and  read.  This 
brilliant  versatile  Lowell,  this  college  professor, 
editor,  poet,  etymologist,  diplomat,  essayist,  stu 
dent  of  literature  and  politics,  did  not  for  naught 
don  the  robes  of  critic  and  adventure  to  sit  in  the 
Siege  Perilous  amid  that  circle  which  numbers  in 
English  Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Carlyle,  and 
Matthew  Arnold. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  study  to  weigh  the 
merits  of  Lowell  the  critic,  to  consider  dispassion 
ately  his  gifts  and  equipment,  to  ascertain  if 
possible  his  right  to  a  place  in  the  brilliant 
company  of  admitted  critics. 

In  these  days  when  criticism  is  in  large  measure 
merely  a  series  of  personal  impressions,  one  need 
not  perhaps  defend  the  objective  method  employed 
throughout  this  study.  For  the  conclusions  pre 
sented  here  the  writer  alone  is  responsible. 

To  Professor  Cook  of  Yale,  at  whose  suggestion 
this  work  was  undertaken,  my  gratitude  is  due 
for  his  unfailing  interest  and  advice,  and  to  Pro 
fessor  Beers  of  Yale  for  his  kindness  on  many 
occasions.  I  wish  to  acknowledge  my  obligations 
to  my  sister,  Miss  Katherine  M.  Reilly,  for  pa 
tience  and  care  in  transcribing,  and  to  Miss  Teresa 


PREFACE  vii 

Ryan,  whose  aid  in  reading  proof  and  in  prepar 
ing  the  index,  has  been  generously  given. 


J.  J- 


STATE  HOUSE,  BOSTON, 
March,  1915. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I.- — LOWELL:    THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   .         i 
II. — THE  RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE         42 

III. — LOWELL'S   SYMPATHY:    ITS   BREADTH 

AND  LIMITATIONS      .         .         .         .77 

IV. — THE  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  WITH  LOWELL   .     106 
V. — PENETRATION:     THE  ULTIMATE  GIFT     .     136 
VI. — LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND      .         .         .173 
VIL— LOWELL:    THE  CRITIC  AND  His  CRITI- 

CISM      ....  .  2OO 

\ 

BIBLIOGRAPHY      .         .         .         .         .215 
INDEX  221 


IX 


LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 


CHAPTER  I 
LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER 

THERE  was  good  stock  behind  Lowell.  His 
great-grandfather  and  his  father  were  clergy 
men;  his  grandfather  attained  a  high  position  in 
the  judiciary.  All  three  were  graduates  of  Har 
vard.  On  his  mother's  side  Lowell  was  descended 
from  an  Orkney  family  named  Spence,  whose 
lineage  he  liked  to  trace  back  to  the  redoubtable 
ballad  hero,  Sir  Patrick  Spens. 

Reverend  Charles  Lowell,  Lowell's  father,  had 
been  trained  for  the  ministry  and  had  sat  under 
the  famous  Dugald  Stewart.  In  religion  he  was 
an  orthodox  Congregationalist,  but  drifted  more 
and  more  toward  Unitarianism  with  the  passing 
years.  As  pastor  of  the  West  Church  in  Boston 
he  was  zealous  in  his  ministrations  to  his  flock 
even  to  the  point  of  impairing  his  health.  He  was 
remarkable  in  the  pulpit  for  refinement  of  manner 
and  a  certain  impressiveness  which  came  not  from 

i 


V  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

originality  of  thought  but  from  charm  of  person 
ality  and  a  singularly  sweet  voice.  His  son  wrote 
of  him  in  1844:  "My  father  is  one  of  the  men  you 
would  like  to  know.  He  is  Doctor  Primrose  in 
the  comparative  degree,  the  very  simplest  and 
charmingest  of  sexagenarians,  and  not  without  a 
great  deal  of  the  truest  magnanimity."  Doctor 
Lowell  was  not  conspicuous  for  a  sense  of  humor. J 
He  felt  a  deep  interest  and  pride  in  his  son's 
successes ;  he  thought  the  reviews  of  his  poems  were 
not  laudatory  enough,  and  professed  to  believe 
that  he  could  not  understand  more  than  a  tithe 
of  what  young  Lowell  wrote. 

Doctor  Lowell  had  no  sympathy  with  slavery. 
And  yet  like  many  good  men  of  his  time,  he  shrank 
from  the  thought  of  an  inevitable  conflict.  Abo 
litionism,  too  often  the  shibboleth  of  extremists, 
repelled  him.  He  was  in  a  word  a  conservative.  - 
The  world  around  him  seemed  the  theatre  of 
much  that  was  harsh  and  noisy  and  uncharitable. 
For  his  part  he  had  the  manifold  duties  of  his 
parish  and  the  alluring  quiet  of  his  library.  There 
he  had  collected  some  three  or  four  thousand 
volumes,  among  which,  however,  divinity  was  by 
no  means  paramount.  A  conservative  even  in 
literature,  Doctor  Lowell  owned  Pope  as  his 
favorite  poet. 

Lowell's   mother   was    a   woman   of   romantic 
nature;  she  was  fond  of  old  ballads,  which  she 

1  Letters,  i.,  82. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   3 

often  sang  at  twilight,  was  an  omnivorous  reader, 
and  had  a  taste  for  languages.  She  was  said  to 
have  the  faculty  of  second  sight. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  born  in  1819,  was  the 
youngest  of  six  children.  He  attended  a  dame's 
school  at  Cambridge  for  the  rudiments,  and  at  the 
age  of  nine  was  sent  to  the  classical  school  kept 
by  William  Wells,  an  excellent  Latinist.  Among 
Lowell's  schoolmates  were  Thomas  Wentworth 
Higginson  and  W.  W.  Story,  the  "Edelmann 
Storg"  of  Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago,  and  Leaves 
from  my  Journal.  Story  became  his  intimate, 
with  whom  he  read  Spenser's  Faery  Queen. 

Lowell  entered  Harvard  in  1834.  He  scribbled 
for  the  college  magazine  Harvardiana,  wrote  ebul 
lient  letters  to  "My  dearest  Shack,"  and  plunged 
into  omnivorous  reading.  In  his  senior  year  he 
cut  recitations  and  chapel  in  the  face  of  repeated 
warnings,  committed  an  indiscretion  at  evening 
prayers,  and  was  sent  to  rusticate  at  Concord. 
Here  he  met  Emerson  and  Thoreau.  "I  met 
Thoreau  last  night,  and  it  is  exquisitely  amusing 
to  see  how  he  imitates  Emerson's  tone  and  manner. 
With  my  eyes  shut,  I  shouldn't  know  them  apart."  * 
As  for  Emerson:  "He  is  a  good-natured  man  in 
spite  of  his  doctrines."  Lowell  never  got  into 
sympathy  with  Thoreau,  while  for  Emerson  he 
was  later  to  conceive  an  ardent  friendship  and 
an  abiding  admiration. 

1  Letters,  i.,  27. 


4  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Lowell's  heritage  of  conservatism  found  expres 
sion  in  his  class  poem.  ' '  The  objects  of  his  satire, ' ' 
says  Greenslet,  "were  Emerson  and  Transcen 
dentalism,  Carlyle,  Abolitionists,  Temperance 
Agitators,  Woman's  Righters,  and  Vegetarians." 
Here  too  by  the  irony  of  fate  his  views  were  to 
encounter  a  decided  change.  Transcendentalism 
was  to  crop  out  in  his  later  writings;  he  was  to 
make  some  of  Carlyle 's  views  his  own  and  to 
confess  towards  him  a  secret  partiality.  The 
whirligig  of  time  brought  other  revenges:  he  was 
to  join  forces  with  the  Abolitionists  and  to  lecture 
on  Woman's  Rights  and  Temperance. 

After  getting  his  degree  in  1838,  Lowell  was 
forced  to  decide  on  a  profession.  Literature 
appealed  to  him  but  it  was  a  precarious  calling, 
with  little  or  no  standing  at  the  time.  The 
ministry  would  have  given  open  play  to  the  didac 
tic  strain  that  was  strong  in  him,  but  scruples 
held  him  back.  He  enters  Dane  Law  School 
where  he  reads  Blackstone  "with  as  good  a  grace 
and  as  few  wry  faces  as  I  may." x  Within  a  month 
he  has  "renounced  the  law"  and  decided  "to 
settle  down  into  a  business  man  at  last."1  About 
three  weeks  afterwards  he  chances  to  hear  Webster, 
the  great  Webster,  argue  a  case  before  the  United 
States  Court,  and  within  an  hour  has  "determined 
to  continue  in  my  profession  and  study  as  well  as 
I  could." 2  But  these  were  not  happy  days.  Law 

1  Letters,  i.,  32.  *  Ibid.,  i.,  33. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    5 

was  uncongenial.  Lowell  had  been  disappointed 
in  love  and  even  meditated  suicide.  In  February, 
1839,  he  wrote:  "I  have  quitted  the  law  forever." 
Ten  days  later:  "I  am  certainly  just  at  present 
in  a  miserable  state."  But  he  thinks  that  "next 
Monday  may  see  me  with  Kent's  Commentaries 
under  my  arm."  Meanwhile  he  "  sometimes 
actually  needs  to  write  somewhat  in  verse."  It 
is  not  hard  to  see  where  all  this  will  finally  end. 
In  May,  1839,  Lowell  resumed  his  studies  in  law, 
received  his  degree  in  the  summer  of  1840,  and  a 
few  months  later  became  engaged  to  Miss  Maria 
White,  "a  very  pleasant  and  pleasing  young  lady," 
who  knows  "more  about  poetry  than  anyone  I 
am  acquainted  with."1 

From  the  stimulus  that  came  to  him  from  his 
engagement  to  a  woman  of  beauty,  high  ideals, 
and  poetic  sensibility,  Lowell  profited  greatly. 
Something  about  the  witchery  that  was  Maria 
White's  accentuated  those  phases  of  Lowell's 
temperament  which  were  his  heritage  from  a 
mother  who  was  a  romantic  by  nature.  He  wrote 
verse  and,  introduced  by  Miss  White  to  a  group  of 
her  friends  known  as  "The  Band,"  found  himself 
in  an  atmosphere  electric  with  abolitionism  and 
transcendentalism.  Transcendentalism,  so  far  as 
it  followed  Emerson,  manifested  itself  in  a  vague 
mysticism,  a  pantheistic  conception  of  God,  op 
timism,  and  a  general  idealism.  These  various 

1  Letters,  i.,  51. 


6  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

phases  appear  now  and  then  through  a  large  part 
of  Lowell's  work,  but  mostly  before  1848.  In  a 
paper  on  "  Song  Writing,"  to  take  but  one  example, 
he  showed  unmistakable  traces  of  Emerson : 

True  poetry  is  but  the  perfect  reflex  of  true  knowl 
edge,  and  true  knowledge  is  spiritual  knowledge, 
which  comes  only  of  love,  and  which  when  it  has 
solved  the  mystery  of  one,  even  the  smallest  effluence 
of  the  eternal  beauty,  which  surrounds  us  like  an 
atmosphere,  becomes  a  clue  leading  to  the  heart  of 
the  seeming  labyrinth.  .  .  .  Many  things  unseal  the 
springs  of  tenderness  in  us  ere  the  full  glory  of  our 
nature  gushes  forth  to  the  one  benign  Spirit  which 
interprets  for  us  all  mystery  and  is  the  key  to  unlock 
all  the  most  secret  shrines  of  beauty. J 

If  the  following  experience,  detailed  in  a  letter 
of  September,  1842,  could  have  occurred  to  a  man 
of  a  temperament  impressionable  almost  to  the 
degree  of  mysticism,  it  is  also  true  that  the  pecul 
iar  nature  of  the  experience  could  only  have  been 
met  with  in  an  atmosphere  surcharged  with 
transcendentalism : 

I  have  got  a  clue  to  a  whole  system  of  spiritual 
philosophy.  I  had  a  revelation  last  Friday  evening. 
I  was  at  Mary's,  and  happening  to  say  something  of 
the  presence  of  spirits  (of  whom,  I  said,  I  was  often 
dimly  aware),  Mr.  Putnam  entered  into  an  argument 
with  me  on  spiritual  matters.  As  I  was  speaking,  the 

1  The  Pioneer,  Feb.,  1843;  reprinted  in  Early  Writings,  p.  77. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    7 

whole  system  rose  up  before  me  like  a  vague  Destiny 
looming  from  the  abyss.  I  never  before  so  clearly 
felt  the  spirit  of  God  in  me  and  around  me.  The 
whole  room  seemed  to  me  full  of  God.  The  air  seemed 
to  waver  to  and  fro  with  the  presence  of  Something 
I  knew  not  what.  I  spoke  with  the  calmness  and 
clearness  of  a  prophet.  I  cannot  yet  tell  you  what 
this  revelation  was.  I  have  not  yet  studied  it  enough, 
but  I  shall  perfect  it  one  day  and  then  you  shall  hear 
it  and  acknowledge  its  grandeur.  It  embraces  all 
other  systems.1 

One  cannot  but  note  the  buoyant  enthusiasm 
and  self-confidence  of  the  last  two  sentences. 
Lowell  never  became  deeply  entangled  in  the 
excesses  of  the  movement  which  he  pictured  so 
humorously  in  Thoreau  from  the  vantage  point 
of  later  years. 

Abolitionism  was  by  no  means  the  fashion  in 
the  early  '40*3,  but  this  was  nothing  to  an  enthusi 
ast,  and  before  the  year  was  out  Lowell  was  heart 
and  soul  in  the  movement.  Writing  to  his  class 
mate  Heath,  a  Virginian,  he  says:  "I  cannot 
reason  on  the  subject.  A  man  who  is  in  the  right 
can  never  reason.  He  can  only  affirm. ' '  Further : 
"My  heart  whirls  and  tosses  like  a  maelstrom 
when  I  think  of  it  [slavery]."  His  letters  during 
these  years  are  filled  with  such  phrases  as  "the 
freedom  of  5,000,000  of  men,"  the  "curse  of 
slavery,"  and  the  like. 

1  Letters,  i.,  69  ff. 


8  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

The  stimulus  of  love  and  friendships,  the  need 
of  success,  and  the  new  enthusiasm  born  of  his 
interest  in  abolitionism,  while  they  brought  no 
clients  to  Lowell  the  lawyer,  furnished  forceful 
impulse  to  Lowell  the  poet.  In  the  fall  of  1840 
appeared  A  Year's  Life,  a  volume  of  poems,  a 
few  of  which  were  of  high  quality.  All  told  they 
were  rather  vague,  but  marked  a  poet  to  whom 
love  and  human  brotherhood  were  topics  of  vital 
interest. 

To  the  Boston  Miscellany,  edited  by  his  friend 
Hale,  Lowell  contributed  a  sheaf  of  prose  essays 
during  1842.  The  most  ambitious  of  them  were 
papers  on  Elizabethan  dramatists,  Chapman, 
Webster,  Ford,  and  Massinger.  They  are  im 
portant  as  Lowell's  first  ventures  in  criticism. 
Not  that  they  are  seriously  to  be  regarded  as 
critical,  for  their  aim  was  to  set  out  beautiful  pas 
sages  from  the  old  plays  with  comments — sign 
posts  for  admiration — rather  than  to  investigate 
dramatical  construction  or  character  develop 
ment.  In  tone  we  find  an  odd  blend  of  sophpmo- 
ricism  which  believes  itself  knowledge  of  the  world  ; 
an  air  of  superiority  none  the  less  present  because 
entirely  unconscious;  a  tendency  to  preach  which 
may  have  been  a  heritage  but  was  to  remain  an 
abiding  possession.  "We  have  grown  too  polite 
for  what  is  holiest,  noblest,  and  kindest  in  the 
social  relations  of  life;  but  alas!  to  lie,  to  blush, 
to  conceal,  to  envy,  to  sneer,  to  be  illiberal, — 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   9 

these  trench  not  on  the  bounds  of  any  modesty, 
human  or  divine." *  One  thing  about  these  papers 
is  unmistakable :  Lowell  had  thus  early  an  excellent 
taste  which  led  him  to  recognize  real  poetry  when 
he  saw  it.  Not  a  single  selection  from  the  drama 
tists — and  he  gives  many — fails  to  justify  itself 
for  beauty  of  phrasing  or  imaginative  quality. 

A  fifth  paper  of  the  series  on  the  Elizabethans 
appeared  in  The  Pioneer  for  January,  1843,  a 
magazine  which  Lowell  himself  launched  with 
high  hopes  of  success.  It  was  hardly  started 
when  a  serious  trouble  with  his  eyes  sent  him  to 
New  York  for  medical  treatment.  Three  numbers 
of  the  new  magazine  appeared;  the  project  was 
then  abandoned.  It  may  be  seriously  questioned 
how  wide  a  patronage  an  editor  was  to  command 
who  assumed  in  his  prospectus  the  position  of 
arbiter  elegantice : 

The  object  of  the  subscribers  in  'establishing  The 
Pioneer  is  to  furnish  the  intelligent  and  reflecting 
portion  of  the  reading  public  with  a  rational  substi 
tute  for  the  enormous  quantity  of  thrice  diluted 
trash  in  the  shape  of  namby-pamby  love  tales  and 
sketches  which  is  monthly  poured  out  to  them  by 
many  of  our  popular  magazines,  and  to  offer  instead 
thereof  a  healthy  arid  manly  Periodical  Literature, 
whose  perusal  will  not  necessarily  involve  a  loss  of 
time  and  a  deterioration  of  every  moral  and  intellec 
tual  faculty. 

1  Early  Writings,  p.  124. 


io  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Returning  from  New  York  where  he  had  be 
come  acquainted  with  Willis  and  other  literati  of 
the  metropolis,  Lowell  established  himself  at  his 
father's  home  at  Elmwood  and  prepared  for  the 
press  a  volume  of  poems  which  was  issued  late 
in  the  year  1843.  He  worked  under  depressing 
conditions,  for  his  mother's  mind  had  given  way 
and  that  of  his  sister  Rebecca  betrayed  signs  of 
disorder.  The  White  home  was  easily  accessible 
and  Lowell  found  solace  in  the  company  of  his 
future  wife.  His  volume  received  a  gratifying 
reception  and  marked  indeed,  in  sureness  of  tone 
and  interest  in  the  questions  of  the  hour,  a  distinct 
advance  over  A  Year's  Life.  In  the  success  which 
attended  the  publication  of  these  poems  was 
mingled  an  ounce  of  bitter.  Margaret  Fuller,  in 
her  Review  of  American  Literature,  said  of  Lowell: 
"His  interest  in  the  moral  questions  of  the  day 
has  supplied  the  want  of  vitality  in  himself." 
Lowell  repaid  the  score  in  A  Fable  for  Critics; 
he  was  hurt.  Could  it  be  that  he  felt  some 
essential  truth  in  the  charge? 

On  the  literary  work  in  which  he'  was  now  en 
gaged,  Lowell  could  spend  his  undivided  energies. 
For  although  he  wrote  in  March,  1841,  "I  am 
getting  quite  in  love  with  the  law,"  he  confessed 
fourteen  months  later  that  it  was  a  calling  "which 
I  hate,  and  for  which  I  am  not  well  fitted,  to  say 
the  least."  Six  months  later  he  abandoned  it 
forever.  ' '  I  cannot  write  well  here  in  this  cramped 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    n 

up  lawyer's  office  feeling  all  the  time  that  I  am 
giving  the  lie  to  my  destiny."  To  that  destiny 
as  a  man  of  letters  he  yielded  himself,  and  with  a 
sense  of  freedom,  the  first  in  years,  he  plunged 
into  writing  with  a  will. 

Late  in  the  following  year  Lowell  was  married 
to  Maria  White,  whose  influence  remained  a  domi 
nant  factor  during  her  life.  That  same  month 
appeared  his  first  volume  of  prose,  Conversations 
on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets.  The  first  half  of  the 
volume  is  given  over  to  Chaucer;  the  second  half 
to  the  old  dramatists,  Chapman  and  Ford.  These 
papers  are  more  ambitious  than  those  published 
in  the  Boston  Miscellany.  There  is  about  them 
a  greater  sureness,  one  might  almost  say  cock- 
sureness,  which  suggests  a  kinship  between  Lowell 
and  Macaulay.  They  are  lengthy,  with  frequent 
and  ^by__np^_meanSj^  brief  digressions,  with  far 
fetched  introductions  and  spots  of  fervid  rhetoric 
which  dangerously  approach  the  purple  patch. 
Speaking  of  the  prophet  who  bears  a  message  to 
the  world,  he  says:  "In  most  cases  men  do  not 
recognize  him,  till  the  disguise  of  flesh  has  fallen 
off,  and  the  white  wings  of  the  angel  are  seen 
glancing  in  the  full  sunshine  of  that  peace,  back  into 
whose  welcoming  bosom  their  flight  is  turned."1 
Here  is  all  the  vagueness  of  transcendentalism 
without  anything  of  that  prophetic  tone  which 
marked  the  utterances  of  its  protagonist.  The 

1  Conversations,  p.  222. 


12  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

old  poets  get  no  lion's  share  of  attention;  Lowell 
empties  his  mind  of  his  ideas  on  poetry,  on  love, 
on  abolitionism,  and  politics;  on  every  topic  he 
undisguisedly  assumes  a  didactic  attitude.  That 
bent  of  his  mind  which  one  might  call  puritanism 
appears  when  he  says  of  Pope's  poetry:  "Show  me 
a  line  that  makes  you  love  God  and  your  neigh 
bour  better,  that  inclines  you  to  meekness,  charity, 
and  forbearance,  and  I  will  show  you  a  hundred 
that  make  it  easier  for  you  to  be  the  odious  reverse 
of  all  these."1 

Essentially  the  Conversations,  so  far  as  they 
concerned  the  Elizabethan  dramatists,  were  the 
earlier  papers  in  the  Boston  Miscellany,  with  the 
addition  of  numerous  digressions  on  such  topics 
as  appealed  to  Lowell  for  an  expression  of  opinion. 
Passages  are  transferred  verbatim;  often  whole 
pages  appear  in  Conversations  with  scarcely  any 
change.  On  the  whole  the  changes  are  away  from 
simplicity  towards  a  more  expansive  diction.  In 
the  Miscellany,  for  example,  we  find,  "Nature  is 
never  afraid  to  reason  in  a  circle."  This  becomes 
in  Conversations:  "Nature  is  never  afraid  to  reason 
in  a  circle;  we  must  let  her  assume  her  premises 
and  make  our  deductions  logical  accordingly." 

In  Conversations  Lowell  attempts  to  do  more 
than  state  appreciative  dicta;  he  seems  desirous 
of  getting  at  ultimate  principles.  "Shakespeare's 
characters,"  he  says  in  Early  Writings,  "modify  his 

1  Conversations,  p.  149. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    13 

plots  as  much  as  his  plots  modify  his  characters.'* 
After  expanding  this  sentence  slightly  in  Conver 
sations,  he  adds:  "This  may  be  the  result  of  his 
unapproachable  art ;  for  art  in  him  is  but  the  trac 
ing  of  nature  to  her  primordial  laws ;  is  but  nature 
precipitated  as  it  were  by  the  infallible  test  of 
philosophy."  The  figurative  mode  of  expression 
is  worthy  of  notice.  Wordsworth's  Excursion  is 
referred  to  and  a  discussion  follows  regarding  the 
peddler-poet  and  the  poetic  element  in  man  in 
general.  This  discussion  betrays  gaps  in  Lowell's 
mental  processes  and  is  phrased  in  figurative 
language;  the  sureness  of  statement  is  at  variance 
with  the  uncertainty  in  thought.  Opening  to  a 
page  at  random  we  come  upon  mention  of  Isaac 
Walton,  Herbert,  Cowper,  Mrs.  Unwin,  Gold 
smith,  Collins,  Mme.  De  Stael,  Dwight,  Milton. 
A  motley  array  for  a  single  page !  Lowell,  twenty- 
five  years  of  age,  has  been  a  hard  reader,  and  has 
made  himself  acquainted  with  the 'great  names  of 
literature.  Shakespeare  we  come  upon  constantly ; 
already  he  was  deus  certe  to  Lowell.  As  in  the 
early  papers  in  the  Boston  Miscellany  and  the 
Pioneer,  Lowell  selects  excerpts  from  his  poets 
with  a  fine  and  discriminating  taste.  x 

After  his  marriage  in  December,  1843,  Lowell 
went  to  Philadelphia  with  his  young  bride,  as 
an  editorial  writer  for  the  Pennsylvania  Freeman. 

1  Most  of  the  excerpts  from  the  dramatic  poets  were  iden 
tical  with  those  given  in  the  earlier  papers. 


14  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Both  the  Lowells  contributed  frequent  verse  to 
the  Broadway  Journal,  then  edited  by  their  friend 
Briggs.  The  Freeman's  anti-slavery  policy  was 
not  assertive  enough  to  suit  the  views  of  Lowell, 
who  besides  found  it  "hard  to  write  when  one  is 
first  married."  His  connection  with  the  Freeman, 
one  is  not  surprised  to  find,  came  to  an  end  in  May, 
and  he  returned  with  his  wife  to  Elm  wood. 

In  spite  of  the  happiness  of  married  life  and  the 
demands  of  literature,  Lowell  was  not  able  entirely 
to  dominate  his  adverse  moods. 

My  sorrows  [he  writes]  are  not  literary  ones,  but 
those  of  daily  life.  I  pass  through  the  world  and 
meet  with  scarcely  a  response  to  the  affectionateness 
of  my  nature.  I  believe  Maria  only  knows  how  loving 
I  am  truly.  Brought  up  in  a  very  reserved  and  con 
ventional  family,  I  cannot  in  society  appear  what  I 
really  am.  I  go  out  sometimes  with  my  heart  so 
full  of  yearning  towards  my  fellows  that  the  indifferent 
look  with  which  even  entire  strangers  pass  me  brings 
tears  into  my  eyes.  And  then  to  be  looked  upon 
by  those  who  do  know  me  (externally)  as  ' '  Lowell  the 
Poet" — it  makes  me  sick.  Why  not  Lowell  the  man, 
— the  boy  rather, — as  Jemmy  Lowell,  as  I  was  at 
school?1 

It  was  fortunate  that  he  soon  found  in  the  birth 
of  a  child,  Blanche,  born  December  31,  1845, 
and  in  the  increasing  demands  of  literature,  im- 

1  Letters,  i.,  101. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    15 

pulses  away  from  such  morbid  yielding  to  mood. 
His  ardor  runs  high  and  his  keen  interest  in  reform 
in  general  leads  him  to  reproach  Holmes,  ten  years 
his  senior,  whom  he  scarcely  knew,  with  indiffer 
ence.  Meantime  he  receives  a  transatlantic  hear 
ing  for  abolitionism  by  contributing  four  papers 
early  in  1846  to  the  London  Daily  News.  But  he 
was  to  be  known  in  England  and  indeed  in  America 
more  by  his  next  venture  than  by  anything  he 
had  yet  achieved. 

In  the  Boston  Courier  for  June  17,  1846,  ap 
peared  the  first  of  the  Biglow  Papers.  Three 
more  numbers  followed  during  the  next  year,  a 
year  when  the  indolence  of  which  Lowell  all  his 
life  complained,  was  in  his  blood.  But  he  awoke 
in  1848,  issued  a  second  volume  of  poems,  a  rapid 
series  of  articles  for  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard, 
seven  more  numbers  while  indignation  over  the 
Mexican  War  knocked  at  his  heart,  and  most 
important  of  all  from  our  present  point  of  view, 
A  Fable  for  Critics. 

Although  the  Fable  for  Critics  is  frankly  a  jeu 
&  esprit,  bristling  with  whimsicalities  of  tone  and 
manner,  it  contains  many  keen  characterizations 
of  American  writers  of  the  time.  It  was  a  distinct 
advance  over  Margaret  Fuller's  Review  of  American 
Literature,  which  contained  some  good  things, 
but  was  more  notable  for  erratic  than  for  good 
judgment.  Lowell,  who  put  no  uncertain  finger 
on  the  sound  and  the  weak  spots  of  the  author 


1 6  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

discussed,  did  not  show  himself  infallible.  He 
failed  to  do  adequate  justice  to  Poe,  Bryant,  and 
Thoreau.  But  the  deeper  qualities  of  Holmes, 
Cooper,  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  and  Emerson, 
1  Lowell  undoubtedly  did  suggest.  He  constantly 
translates  his  characterizations  into  figurative 
language,  a  tendency  which  he  never  abandoned. 
Speaking  of  Hawthorne  and  his  "  genius  so  shrink 
ing  and  rare,"  he  goes  on : 

A  frame  so  robust  with  a  nature  so  sweet, 

So  earnest,  so  graceful,  so  lithe,  and  so  fleet, 

Is  worth  a  descent  from  Olympus  to  meet; 

'Tis  as  if  a  rough  oak  that  for  ages  had  stood 

With  his  gnarled  bony  branches  like  ribs  of  the  wood, 

Should  bloom  after  cycles  of  struggle  and  scathe, 

With  a  single  anemone  trembly  and  rathe. 

There  is  little  or  no  attempt  to  go  into  principles ; 
in  the  last  analysis  the  poem  is  a  series  of  lightning- 
flash  characterizations  which  are  sound  on  the 
whole  because  Lowell's  intuitive  perception  was 
clear. 

As  a  wit  and  humorist,  Lowell  assumed  a  high 
rank  after  the  publication  of  the  Fable  and  the 
Biglow  Papers.  The  latter  work  was  pirated  in 
England  in  1859,  and  the  man  who  was  afterwards 
to  be  Ambassador  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  and 
to  be  regarded  as  the  foremost  of  American  men 
of  letters,  was  first  known  only  as  a  writer  of 
jingling  verses  in  Yankee  dialect.  The  enthusi- 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    17 

asm  with  which  Lowell  regarded  reform  in  general 
and  abolitionism  in  particular  fired  him  with 
indignation  over  the  prosecution  of  a  war  which 
to  him  represented  jingoism  and  the  lust  of  slavery 
for  aggrandizement. 

Reform  in  politics  was  always  to  be  an  absorb 
ing  topic  with  Lowell,  but  now  that  the  war  was 
ended  his  interest  flagged  for  a  time.  In  the  new 
poem  he  is  projecting,  The  Nooning,  he  disclaims 
any  intention  of  giving  "even  a  glance  towards 
reform."  He  is  feeling  perhaps  the  reaction  from 
the  tense  enthusiasm  which  his  wife  aroused  and 
with  her  friends  of  "The  Band"  kept  stimulated. 
But  with  the  years  he  has  drifted  away  from  "The 
Band"  and  drawn  near  to  the  coterie  of  friends 
who  made  Boston  a  centre  of  thought  and  letters. 
And  the  keen  impulse  which  his  wife  furnished  was 
becoming  dulled  with  her  steady  decline  in  health. 
Lowell  himself  was  eager  to  take  her  to  Europe 
that  they  both  might  enjoy  a  long  holiday  in  the 
midst  of  "new  faces,  other  minds."  In  July, 
1851,  he  sailed  with  his  wife  and  two  children  for 
the  Mediterranean. 

Most  of  the  first  year  abroad  was  spent  in 
Italy.  In  November,  1852,  Lowell  wrote  to 
Briggs:  "I  have  written  nothing  since  I  left  home 
except  a  few  letters  and  a  journal  now  and  then. 
I  have  been  absorbing.  I  have  studied  Art  to  some 
purpose."  His  tendency  to  indolence  afflicts  his 
conscience  at  times.  He  writes :  "  I  am  beginning, 


1 8  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

I  hope,  to  find  out  that  I  can  work.  Laziness  has 
ruined  me  hitherto."  From  Italy  the  Lowells 
passed  through  Switzerland,  Germany,  and 
France  and  spent  some  time  in  England.  Lowell 
is  in  a  depressed  mood  which  is  evident  in  all  his 
letters.  His  little  son  has  died  and  is  buried  at 
Rome;  his  wife  is  steadily  declining  in  health. 
Back  in  America  among  the  beloved  surround 
ings  of  Cambridge,  Maria  Lowell  dies  (October  27, 
J853)  and  Lowell  has  to  summon  up  all  the  re 
serves  of  a  nature  "sloping  to  the  southern  side" 
in  order  to  battle  against  the  feeling  of  desolation 
which  threatened  to  overwhelm  him. 

If  that  reserve  and  self-control  at  crises  which 
came  to  Lowell  from  the  paternal  side  stood  him 
in  good  stead  at  this  time,  the  maternal  heritage 
of  sensitiveness  to  impressions  made  his  faculty 
of  vision  especially  acute.  He  saw  his  wife  in 
dreams,  now  alone,  now  with  her  child  on  her  knee, 
and  again  he  sees  "a  crescent  of  angels  standing 
and  shining  silently."1 

But  the  world  of  matter-of-fact  surrounds  him 
and  he  finally  gets  his  grip  on  things  again.  Some 
time  before  he  was  asked  to  deliver  a  course  of 
lectures  at  Lowell  Institute  and  was  paid  in  ad 
vance.  The  labor  of  preparing  the  series  of  twelve, 
which  he  purposed  giving,  furnished  him  with 
an  outlet  for  his  mental  activities.  The  course 
began  January  7,  1855.  Two  days  later  he  writes 

1  Scudder,  i.,  358. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    19 

to  W.  J.  StiHman:  "I  delivered  my  first  lecture  to 
a  crowded  hall  on  Tuesday  night  and  I  believe 
I  have  succeeded.  The  lecture  was  somewhat 
abstract,  but  I  kept  the  audience  perfectly  still 
for  an  hour  and  a  quarter."  This  first  lecture 

was  occupied  with  definitions,  and  in  a  familiar  way 
Lowell  set  about  distinguishing  poetry  from  prose. 
.  .  .  Having  cleared  the  way,  he  took  up  the  con 
sideration  of  English  poetry  in  the  historical  order, 
dealing  with  the  forerunners,  Piers  Ploughman's 
Vision,  the  Metrical  Romances,  and  the  Ballads; 
and  then  devoting  one  lecture  each  to  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  Milton,  Butler,  and  Pope. x 

In  the  next  discourse  he  took  up  the  subject  of 
poetic  diction;  in  the  eleventh,  he  dealt  with 
Wordsworth;  in  the  twelfth,  with  "The  Func 
tion  of  the  Poet."  The  series  proved  a  decided 
success.2  This  is  not  hard  to  understand.  They 
were  popular  in  form,  free  from  abstruse  discus 
sion,  rich  in  illustration,  in  citation  from  the 
authors  under  discussion,  and  sparkling  in  humor. 
In  breadth  of  treatment,  grace  of  diction,  and 
freedom  from  didacticism  they  mark  a  distinct 
advance  over  the  Conversations.  Incomplete  as 
they  are  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  them  justly. 

1  Scudder,  i.,  374. 

2  These  lectures  were  printed  in  more  or  less  abridged  form 
in  the  Boston  Advertiser,  whence  they  were  reprinted  in  1897, 

y  the  Rowfant  Club  of  Cleveland,  Ohio. 


20  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

But  whatever  was  good  in  them  reappeared  in  the 
later  critical  essays.  Lowell  was  not  the  man  to 
waste  an  epigrammatic  sentence,  a  comprehensive 
paragraph,  or  a  striking  figure.1  The  following 
sentence  is  typical;  it  shows  Lowell's  irony,  his 
humor,  .his  poetry,  and  that  tendency  already 
noted  which  was  ever  a  prime  characteristic  of 
his  criticism, — interpretation  by  means  of  figures: 

In  our  New  England  especially,  where  May-day 
is  a  mere  superstition  and  the  Maypole  a  poor  half- 
hardy  exotic  which  shivers  in  an  east  wind  almost  as 
sharp  as  Endicott's  axe, — where  frozen  children,  in 
unseasonable  muslin,  celebrate  the  floral  games  with 
nosegays  from  the  milliner's,  and  winter  reels  back, 
like  shattered  Lear,  bringing  the  dead  spring  in  his 
arms,  her  budding  breast  and  wan  dislustered  cheeks 
all  overblown  with  the  drifts  and  frosty  streaks  of  his 
white  beard, — where  even  Chanticleer,  whose  sap 
mounts  earliest  in  that  dawn  of  the  year,  stands 
dumb  beneath  the  dripping  eaves  of  his  harem,  with 
his  melancholy  tail  at  half-mast, — one  has  only  to 
take  down  a  volume  of  Chaucer,  and  forthwith  he 
can  scarce  step  without  crushing  a  daisy,  and  the 

1  On  this  point  compare  the  quotation  in  the  text  with  the 
following  from  "Under  the  Willows"  (1868),  Poetical  Works, 
iii.,  151. 

"And  Winter  suddenly,  like  crazy  Lear, 
Reels  back,  and  brings  the  dead  May  in  his  arms, 
Her  budding  breasts  and  wan  dislustered  front 
With  frosty  streaks  and  drifts  of  his  white  beard 
All  overblown." 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    21 

sunshine  flickers  on  small  new  leaves  that  throb  thick 
with  song  of  merle  and  mavis.1 

It  is  not  hard    to  understand  why  this  course 
appealed  to  a  popular  audience. 

A  speedy  and  important  result  followed  these 
lectures:  Lowell  received  the  appointment  to 
succeed  Longfellow  as  Professor  of  Belles-Lettres 
at  Harvard.  He  accepted  and  went  abroad  for 
a  year  spending  most  of  the  time  in  Germany 
studying  the  language  diligently  and  attending 
lectures  in  German  literature  and  aesthetics.2  "I 
have  made  some  headway,"  he  writes  in  January, 
1856,  "can read  German  almost  as  easily  as  French. 
That  is  already  something.  Meanwhile,  my 
studies  do  me  good.  My  brain  is  clear  and  my 
outlook  over  life  seems  to  broaden."  Again: 
"My  study  of  German  widens  so  before  me — the 
history  of  the  literature  is  so  interesting  and,  by 
its  harmonies  and  discords  with  our  own,  sets  so 
many  things  in  a  white  light  for  me,  that  I  see 

1  Lectures  on  English  Poets  (Rowfant  Club),  p.  80. 

2  He  writes  from  Dresden  in  October,  1855:  "I  am  reading 
for  my  own  amusement  (du  Hebe  Gott!)  the  aesthetische  For- 
schungen  von  Adolf  Zeising,  pp.  568,  large  octavo!     Then  I 
overset  something  aus  German  into  English.  .  .  .  Nachmittag 
I  study  Spanish  with  a  nice  young  Spaniard  who  is  in  the  house, 
to    whom    I    teach    English    in    return.       Um  seeks    Uhr   ich 
spazieren  gehe,  and  at  7  come  home  and  Dr.  R.  dictates  and  I 
write.  .  .  .  Then,  after  tea,  we  sit  and  talk  German — or  what 
some  of  us  take  to  be  such — and  which  I  speak  like  a  native — 
of  some  other  country."     Letters,  i.,  241  ff. 


22  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

infinite  work  and  satisfaction  ahead.  I  have 
learned  a  little  of  the  German  thoroughness  of 
investigation."  He  is  eager  to  go  to  Italy:  "Any 
trifle  is  enough  to  whirl  my  thoughts  in  that 
direction."  And  he  soothes  his  scruples  over  this 
vagrant  desire  by  exclaiming:  "It  would  freshen 
up  my  Italian,  which  has  fallen  frightfully  into 
abeyance  here."  He  runs  away  to  Italy  for  a 
few  months  and  returns  to  Dresden  in  June.  He 
has  not  outgrown  his  moods.  His  holiday  across 
the  Alps  recalls  the  gloomy  winter  in  Germany, 
and  he  wonders  how  he  succeeded  in  learning  so 
much  of  the  language  ' '  when  I  think  what  a  restive 
creature  I  was  all  last  winter." 

In  the  autumn  (1856),  he  undertook  his  duties 
as  professor  and  remained  in  harness  for  sixteen 
consecutive  years.  The  continuity  of  his  life, 
rudely  broken  by  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  was 
renewed  by  his  marriage  in  1857,  to  Miss  Frances 
Dunlop,  the  governess  of  his  daughter.  He  could 
now*  without  domestic  anxiety  concentrate  on  his 
professorial  work.  This  he  carried  on  in  no 
strict  fashion.  His  method  of  conducting  class 
varied  with  his  mood.  He  entertained  the  students 
at  his  home  but  was  not  certain  to  recall  their 
faces  when  next  he  met  them.  Although  freed 
from  most  of  the  drudgery  of  teaching  languages, 
Lowell  never  quite  reconciled  himself  to  the  class 
room.  "What  can  a  man  do  in  a  treadmill?" 
he  asks,  writing  to  Fields  in  1864.  Again:  "If  I 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   23 

can  sell  some  of  my  land  and  slip  my  neck  out  of 
this  collar  that  galls  me  so  I  should  be  a  man 
again.  I  am  not  the  stuff  that  professors  are 
made  of.  ...  My  professorship  is  wearing  me 
out."  His  moods  pursued  him  always.  He  gives 
warning  to  Ho  wells  in  1882,  regarding  the  accep 
tance  of  a  professorship:  "If  you  are  a  systematic 
worker,  independent  of  moods,  and  sure  of  your 
genius  whenever  you  want  it,  there  might  be  no 
risk  in  accepting." 

Lowell  worked  hard,  not  infrequently  poring 
over  his  books  till  early  morning.  Among  his 
courses  at  various  times  during  his  professorship 
were  those  in  German,  Spanish  (especially  Don 
Quixote),  Italian  (concentrating  on  Dante),  and 
Old  French,  the  last  becoming  his  special  field. 

In  trie  meantime  his  labors  were  not  confined 
to  the  classroom  and  its  concerns.  He  accepted 
the  editorship  of  the  newly  established  Atlantic 
Monthly,  and  with  such  contributors  as  Emerson, 
Holmes,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  Thoreau,  an 
excellent  literary  taste  of  his  own,  and  a  capacity 
for  hard  work  which  outer  influence  had  forced  to 
become  fairly  consistent,  he  achieved  a  distinct 
success  in  the  undertaking.  Most  of  the  best- 
known  contributors  to  the  Atlantic  formed  the 
Saturday  Club  whose  monthly  dinners  became 
famous.  Here  Lowell  met  in  intimacy  minds 
at  once  cultured  and  acute  and  the  contact  gave 
him  much  of  that  stimulus  which  he  craved. 


24  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

To  the  Atlantic  Lowell  contributed  freely — 
reviews,  poems,  and  political  papers.  Politics 
engaged  his  attention  again  with  the  outbreak  of 
the  Civil  War,  and  he  even  revived  the  Biglow 
Papers  to  furnish  a  vent  for  his  ardent  opinions. 
Five  young  relatives  died  in  the  Federal  service; 
Lowell's  white-hot  patriotism  was  not  an  abstract 
matter,  merely  a  phase  of  his  philosophy  of  life; 
it  was  vibrant  with  that  emotion  which  love  must 
feel  when  its  dear  ones  taste  the  bitterness  of 
death.  That  is  why  several  of  the  second  series 
of  the  Biglow  Papers  glow  with  a  passion  quite 
unknown  to  the  earlier  set.  Lowell  however 
did  not  retain  his  editorial  position  through  the 
troublous  days  of  the  Civil  War:  he  yielded  his 
chair  to  James  T.  Fields  in  1861,  and  in  January, 
1864,  undertook  the  editorship  of  the  North  Ameri 
can  Review  jointly  with  Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

In  the  North  American  most  of  Lowell's  sub 
sequent  papers  on  politics  and  criticism  were  to 
appear.  His  political  essays  evidence  his  un 
failing  brilliance,  but  they  are  often  charged  with 
literary  allusions  which  make  one  doubt  their 
appeal  to  any  but  the  highly  educated  few:  "In 
this  late  advertising  tour  of  a  policy  in  want  of  a 
party,  Cleon  and  Agoracritus  seem  to  have  joined 
partnership  and  the  manners  of  the  man  match 
those  of  the  master."1  These  essays  are  clearly 
the  work  of  one  who  writes  from  the  sanctum  in 

1  Works,  v.,  296. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   25 

an  appeal  to  what  must  prove  a  limited  circle. 
At  times  they  show  breadth  of  view  and  such 
wisdom  as  could  say,  as  early  as  1866:  [The  South 
ern  people]  "have  won  our  respect,  the  people  of 
Virginia  especially,  by  their  devotion  ...  in 
sustaining  what  they  believed  to  be  their  righteous 
quarrel."1  But  one  finds  at  other  times  a  con 
fusion  of  expression  as  well  as  of  thought,  a  tend 
ency  to  let  argument  gyrate  instead  of  advance,  an 
indulgence  in  sophomoric  humor  and  even  personal 
ities:  "We  remember  seeing  the  prodigious  nose  of 
Mr.  Tyler  (for  the  person  behind  it  had  been  added 
by  nature  merely  as  the  handle  to  so  fine  a  hatchet) 
drawn  by  six  white  horses  through  the  streets."2 
There  is  no  mistaking  Lowell  in  these  papers ;  he  is 
the  enthusiast  of  1840  grown  older,  confident  in 
his  point  of  view,  impatient  towards  a  difference 
of  opinion,  inclined  to  cocksureness  in  tone. 

Lowell's  best  work  in  the  North  American  was 
not  concerned  with  politics  but  with  literature. 
From  1865  till  1876  he  published  there  all  those 
critical  essays  which  were  later  to  be  issued  as  My 
Study  Windows  and  as  the  two  volumes  of  Among 
My  Books.  Written  as  they  were  at  the  height  of 
his  powers,  they  furnished  the  basis  on  which  his 
reputation  as  a  critic  largely  rests. 3 

1  Works,  v.,  325.     Cf.,  also,  v.,  152,  227. 
3  Ibid.,  v.,  296.     Cf.,  also,  v.,  214,  250,  253. 
3  Numerous  book  reviews  in  various  magazines,  especially 
in  the  Atlantic  and  North  American,  have  not  been  reprinted. 


26  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

The  years  from  1865  to  1872  saw  the  heyday  of 
Lowell's  achievement,  nearly  all  his  best  prose 
writings,  many  of  his  finest  poems,  and  his  most 
sustained  efforts  in  sanctum  and  classroom.  Feel 
ing  the  need  of  a  rest  after  sixteen  years  of  teach 
ing,  he  resigned  his  places  both  as  editor  and 
professor  in  1872,  and  spent  the  following  two  years 
in  Europe.  The  reaction  from  the  labor  of  teach* 
ing  and  editing  brought  about  a  fall  in  spirits. 
"The  prevailing  tone  of  his  letters  during  these 
years  was,  as  always,  cheerful;  but  reading  be 
tween  the  lines  we  can  see  that  his  mood  partook 
more  and  more  of  a  sombre  melancholy."1  Some 
months  were  spent  in  England,  a  winter  in  Paris, 
where  Lowell  worked  hard  at  Old  French,  the 
summer  following  in  Switzerland  and  Germany, 
and  the  winter  in  Italy.  From  Naples  he  writes 
that  he  has  been  "  twice  to  the  incomparable 
museum  which  is  to  me  the  most  interesting  in 
the  world."  But  on  the  whole  his  Italian  letters 
make  almost  no  mention  of  the  art  treasures  which 
surround  him.  Remembering  this  same  lack  in 
his  letters  during  his  earlier  journeyings,  one  is 
not  surprised.  He  received  academic  honors 
from  Oxford  and  Cambridge  and  returned  home 
to  America  in  July,  1874,  resolved,  as  he  wrote 
humorously  to  Hughes,  to  try  "to  be  as  good  as 

1  Greenslet,  p.  174.  Lowell  writes  to  Norton,  February, 
1874:  [I  am]  "happy  for  the  first  time  (I  mean  consciously 
happy)  since  I  came  over  here." 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   27 

the  orator  [at  Cambridge  University]  said  I  was." 
He  resumed  his  teaching  at  Harvard,  being 
persuaded  to  accept  the  chair  which  he  had  re 
signed  on  going  abroad,  read  incredibly  long  hours 
every  day,  and  in  his  poetry  showed  a  revival  of 
his  old-time  interest  in  political  reform.  Sent 
to  the  Republican  National  Convention  of  1876, 
he  opposed  Elaine,  and  as  a  Presidential  Elector 
he  voted  for  Hayes  against  Tilden  in  the  contested 
election  of  that  year. 

Eminent  men  of  letters  like  Irving  and  Motley 
had  been  sent  on  diplomatic  missions  in  the  past, 
and  talk  of  Lowell  for  a  similar  appointment 
began  to  appear  in  the  press.  He  declined  the 
post  at  Vienna,  but  later  accepted  that  at  Madrid. 
He  dislikes  leaving  Elmwood,  he  writes  his  daugh 
ter,  especially  "while  it  is  looking  so  lovely." 
But  the  appointment  to  Madrid  "will  be  of  some 
use  to  me  in  my  studies." 

Lowell's  career  as  Minister  to  Spain  was  success 
ful,  but  as  he  wrote  almost  nothing  except  what 
his  office  demanded,  the  years  1877  to  1880  have 
little  bearing  on  him  as  a  man  of  letters.  He 
becomes  proficient  in  Spanish,  picks  up  rare  edi 
tions  of  Don  Quixote  and  the  Cronica  of  the  Cid, 
and  complains  ot  'the  lack  of  scientific  booksellers. 
He  was  obviously  Lowell  the  man  of  letters  despite 
the  requirements  of  diplomacy,  and  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  in  his  dispatches  to  the  State  Depart 
ment  at  Washington  he  could  record  that  the 


28  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

prettiest  women  at  a  great  public  function  were 
those  from  Andalusia,  and  that  in  writing  of  the 
death  of  the  young  Queen  Mercedes,  he  should 
quote  a  ''familiar  stanza  of  Malherbe." 

In  the  late  spring  he  went  on  an  excursion  to 
Greece.  Writing  to  his  daughter  from  Athens,  he 
says  he  found  the  town  "shabby"  and  "modern" 
and  "was  for  turning  about  and  going  straight 
back  again."  He  visits  the  Acropolis  and  the 
Parthenon,  which  do  not  seem  to  make  any  notable 
impression.  His  holiday  over,  he  returns  to  Madrid 
to  resume  his  work. 

One  day  in  January,  1880,  he  receives  notice 
of  his  transference  to  the  Court  of  St.  James. 
Probably  no  part  of  Lowell's  career  gave  him 
more  satisfaction  than  the  five  years  he  spent  as 
;  American  Minister  to  England.  A  notable  man 
of  letters,  a  brilliant  conversationalist,  a  ready 
speaker,  the  accredited  representative  of  a  great 
nation,  he  had  every  reason  to  receive  kindly 
treatment  in  England.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
but  that  in  an  important  sense  Lowell's  career  was 
a  distinct  success.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that 
his  social  affiliations  centred  in  the  two  classes, 
literary_  and  aristocratic,  whose  opposition  had 
been  directed  against  the  North  in  the  Civil  War.  x 
One  remembers  Lowell's  bitter  attacks  upon 
England's  pro- Southern  attitude  during  those 
tense  years,  and  recalls  too  that  the  irony  of  fate 
1  Vide  Literary  World,  vol.  xvi.,  222  ff. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   29 

had  played  other  and  earlier  pranks  with  him. 
He  seems  to  have  been  quite  out  of  touch  with 
men  like  Bright  and  Dilke  and  Chamberlain. 
Was  it  true  that  his  indolence  of  temperament  led 
him  to  "seek  the  line  of  least  resistance,"  and  that 
"this  was  for  him  in  England  the  line  of  aristocratic 
association?"1 

There  was  talk  of  making  him  Lord  Rector  of 
St.  Andrews,  and  before  returning  to  America 
he  refused  a  nomination  to  a  professorship  at 
Oxford.  But  most  important  for  our  purpose 

N  are  his  literary  utterances,  especially  those  on 
Fielding,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Cervantes' 
Don  Quixote,  which  he  delivered  on  various  occa 
sions  during  his  English  mission.  These  critiques 
are  not  Lowell's  best  work.  They  are  rather 

v  fragmentary,  more  like  notes  hastily  assembled 
than  like  finished  products.  He  himself  was 
conscious  of  their  defects  and  regretted  that  his 
official  duties  kept  him  at  the  beck  of  every  chance 
interruption.  For  one  thing  especially  we  may 
notice  them  here:  the  tone  is  more  nearly  that  of  a 
man  writing  "at  the  centre"  than  that  of  any  other 
of  his  works.  He  was  in  London,  not  in  Cambridge, 
Massachussetts,  and  he  recognized  that  indefin 
able  something  which  marks  the  atmosphere  of 
a  cosmopolis.  It  was  a  good  thing  for  Lowell  to 
be  at  the  centre  and  to  feel  the  critical  eyes  of  a 
select  audience  in  Westminster  Abbey  leveled 

1  Vide  Literary  World,  vol.  xvi.,  223. 


30  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

upon  him.  It  was  unfortunate  that  cosmopolitan 
influence  came  so  late. 

Superseded  by  Mr.  Phelps  in  his  diplomatic 
mission,  Lowell  returned  to  America  in  June,  1885. 
He  had  six  years  still  to  live,  during  which  the 
love  of  friends  and  wide  recognition  as  the  leading 
figure  in  American  letters  were  unquestioningly  his. 
He  contributed  poems  now  and  then  to  various  pub 
lications,  especially  to  the  Atlantic,  gave  occasional 
addresses,  and  wrote  a  few  critical  essays.  This 
comprised,  with  one  exception,  his  original  work. 
He  looked  after  the  collection  and  publication  of 
various  of  his  writings,  in  prose  and  verse,  which 
had  already  reached  the  public  either  as  addresses 
or  in  the  pages  of  magazines  and  reviews. 

It  was  a  remarkable  coincidence  that  Lowell's 
last  sustained  effort  in  the  field  of  criticism  should, 
like  his  earliest  one,  have  to  do  with  the  Eliza 
bethan  dramatists ;  that  his  last  conspicuous  ap 
pearance  as  a  lecturer  should  be,  like  his  first  one, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Lowell  Institute.  It  is 
interesting  to  compare  the  thin  volume  called 
Old  English  Dramatists,  published  after  Lowell's 
death,  with  the  earlier  papers  on  the  same  subject 
in  the  Boston  Miscellany  in  1842,  and  in  Conversa 
tions  published  two  years  later.  These  lectures 
of  1887,  like  the  early  papers,  comprise  excerpts 
from  the  dramatists,  with  appreciative  comment, 
rather  than  a  body  of  formal  criticism.  Like  the 
Conversations  they  furnish  Lowell  a  medium  for 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    31 

the  expression  of  his  views  on  various  matters: 
the  need  of  a  National  Capital ;  the  value  of  biog 
raphy  in  the  appreciation  of  an  author ;  the  place 
of  imagination  in  life.  But  Lowell  does  not 
wander  far  afield.  He  comes  back  to  a  discus 
sion  of  form,  of  plot,  of  the  refinement  of  language, 
questions  which  were  beyond  his  power  adequately 
to  treat  in  Conversations.  His  tone  has  the  easy 
certainty  born  of  ripe  years  given  to  a  study  ot  the 
subject;  it  is  the  tone  of  a  man  who  looks  at  his 
audience  from  the  eminence  which  belongs  to  a 
long  life  and  knowledge  of  the  world  and  an  estab 
lished  reputation  in  the  field  of  letters.  There  is 
no  striking  shift  of  opinion  between  the  early  and 
the  final  discussion  of  the  old  dramatists,  except 
in  one  instance.  To  the  Lowell  of  the  Boston 
Miscellany  and  Conversations,  Ford  is  a  prime 
favorite.  Said  the  Lowell  of  1844 : 

Set  beside  almost  any  of  our  modern  dramatists, 
there  is  certainly  something  grand  and  free  about  him 
[Ford];  and  though  he  has  not  that  "large  utterance" 
which  belonged  to  Shakespeare,  and  perhaps  one  or  two 
others  of  his  contemporaries,  he  sometimes  rises  into  a 
fiery  earnestness  which  falls  little  short  of  sublimity. 1 

Says  the  Lowell  of  1887 : 

In  reading  him  [Ford]  again  after  a  long  interval, 
with  elements  of  wider  comparison,  and  provided 

1  Conversations,  p.  238. 


32  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

with  more  trustworthy  tests,  I  find  that  the  greater 
part  of  what  I  once  took  on  trust  as  precious  is  really 
paste  and  pinchbeck.  ...  He  abounds  especially 
in  mock  pathos.  .  .  .  Having  once  come  to  know  the 
jealous  secretiveness  of  real  sorrow,  we  resent  these 
conspiracies  to  waylay  our  sympathy.  x 

One  can  explain  and  to  some  extent  appreciate 
Lowell's  resentment  over  what  he  deems  mock 
pathos,  if  one  remembers  that  this  is  the  Lowell 
who  but  two  short  years  before  had  seen  his  wife 
laid  to  rest  in  an  English  grave. 

It  was  to  miscellaneous  literary  work  that 
Lowell  devoted  these  last  years.  But  he  did  not 
forget  the  friends  across  the  Atlantic.  He  sailed 
to  England  to  spend  there  the  summer  of  1886  and 
made  the  voyage  again  in  the  spring  of  1887.  He 
soon  found  himself,  he  writes,  "  trotting  around 
in  the  old  vicious  circle  of  dinners  and  receptions." 
London  stimulated  him.  "It  amuses  and  interests 
me.  My  own  vitality  seems  to  reinforce  itself 
as  if  by  some  unconscious  transfusion  of  blood 
from  these  ever  throbbing  arteries  of  life  into  my 
own."  But  he  was  steadily  getting  to  the  point 
where  such  stimulus  was  becoming  ineffectual, 
for  his  physical  vitality  was  on  the  wane.  He 
spent  the  two  following  summers  in  England,2 
and  on  returning  devoted  himself  to  revising  the 

1  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  128  ff. 

a  In  June,  1888,  Lowell  received  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters 
from  the  University  of  Bologna. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    33 

final  edition  of  his  works.  Unable  to  get  about 
except  with  great  pain,  he  reads  Scott  and  Bos  well's 
Johnson  and  "Kipling's  stories  .  .  .  with  real 
pleasure."  He  was  a  reader  to  the  end. 

James  Russell  Lowell  died  at  Elmwood  in 
Cambridge,  August  12,  1891. 

What  now  is  one  to  keep  in  mind  about  Lowell? 
His  father  was  a  man  of  charming  manner,  ardent 
piety,  but  of  little  originality.  His  mother  was 
accredited  with  second  sight.  She  had  a  romantic 
nature  and  was  a  great  reader.  In  Lowell  him 
self  were  blended  the  strong  common-sense  and 
conservatism  of  New  England  forebears  and  the 
tendency  to  romance  and  mysticism  which  was 
his  maternal  heritage.  As  early  as  1840  he  has 
visions;  after  his  first  wife's  death  he  sees  her  in 
dreams;  as  late  as  1889  he  tells  Dr.  Mitchell  that 
"commonly  he  saw  a  figure  in  medieval  costume 
which  kept  on  one  side  of  him."1  The  world 
that  eludes  mortal  eyes  seems  always  ready  to 
become  palpable  to  his  vision.  This  mystic  strain 
in  him  does  not  always  conjure  up  pleasant  or 
even  neutral  imaginings.  "I  remember,"  he 
writes  in  1884,  "I  remember  the  ugly  fancy  I  had 
sometimes  that  I  was  another  person,  and  used 
to  hesitate  at  the  door  [of  my  study]  when  I  came 
back  from  my  late  night  walks,  lest  I  should  find 
the  real  owner  of  the  room  sitting  in  my  chair 
before  the  fire." 

1  Letters,  ii.,  371  (note). 
3 


34  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

It  is  obvious  that  such  a  man  will  be  to  a  con 
siderable  extent  the  creature  of  moods.  He  says 
of  himself : 

For  me  Fate  gave,  whate'er  she  else  denied, 
A  nature  sloping  to  the  southern  side; 
I  thank  her  for  it,  though  when  clouds  arise 
Such  natures  double-darken  gloomy  skies. 

The  pleasant  moods  were  ebullient.  "I  am  sure 
that  for  my  single  self,  I  always  am  a  fool  when 
I  am  happy."1  His  letters  at  such  a  time  sparkle 
with  quips  and  cranks  and  puns;  one  cannot  but 
wonder  how  such  a  buoyant  creature  could  ever 
know  depression.  But  the  depression  comes. 
He  writes  in  1884:  "Every  now  and  then  my  good 
spirits  carry  me  away  and  people  find  me  amusing, 
but  reaction  always  sets  in  the  moment  I  am  left 
to  myself."  We  shall  return  to  this  last  sentence 
again. 

Lowell  frequently  accuses  himself  of  dilatoriness 
and  indolence,  "constitutional  indolence,"  he 
calls  it.  In  moments  of  depression  he  thinks  of 
this  weakness  as  almost  fatal:  "I  have  thrown 
away  hours  enough  to  have  made  a  handsome 
reputation  out  of."2  In  1878  he  speaks  of  willing 
his  books  to  the  Harvard  Library,  "whither  they 
will  go  when  I  am  in  Mount  Auburn,  with  so  much 
undone  that  I  might  have  done.  I  hope  my  grand- 

1  Letters,  i.,  45.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  179. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    35 

sons  will  have  some  of  the  method  I  have  always 
lacked."  He  finds  it  depressing  (in  1889)  "to 
be  reminded  that  one  has  lived  so  long  and  done 
so  little."1  These  are  the  regrets  of  a  man  suffer- 
ing  not  merely  from  a  mood  of  depression,  but 
from  the  consciousness  of  a  fatal  defect  within, 
himself  which  robbed  his  accomplishment  of  its 
best  vitality.  What  this  defect  was  will  be  evident 
later  on. 

At  least  once  Lowell's  mood  carried  him,  as 
we  have  seen,  close  to  sentimentality.2  But 
while  the  temperament  of  his  fathers  and  his  own 
sense  of  humor  kept  him  from  such  an  extreme 
thereafter,  his  vein  of  sentiment  lay  ever  near  the 
surface.  At  eighteen  he  likes  "the  poetry  that 
sends  a  cold  thrill  through  one  .  .  .  and  brings 
tears  into  one's  eyes."  He  says  he  could  never 
read  the  biblical  passage,  "Bless  me,  even  me  also, 
O  my  Father!"  without  tears  in  his  eyes.  Love, 
the  greatest  of  sentiments,  affected  him  deeply. 
We  are  not  surprised  at  his  youthful  susceptibility, 
and  are  prepared  to  find  that  "in  common  with 
Petrarch,  Dante,  Tasso,  and  Byron,  I  was  desper 
ately  in  love  before  I  was  ten  years  old."3  At 
eighteen  he  writes:  "Shack,  pity  me!  I  am  in 
love — and  have  been  so  for  some  time,  hopelessly 

1  Letters,  ii.f  367. 

«  Vide  Letters,  i.,  101.      Cf.  "I  do  abhor  sentimentality  from 
the  bottom  of  my  soul." — Ibid.,  i.,  205. 
*  Ibid.,  i.,  18. 


36  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

in  love."  One  day  at  Allston's  gallery,  "I  saw 
something  that  drove  me  almost  crazy  with  de 
light.  You  know  how  beauty  always  affects  me. 
Well,  yesterday  I  saw  the  most  beautiful  creature 
I  ever  set  these  eyes  upon !  'Twere  vain  to  attempt 
to  describe  her,"  etc.1  One  must  note  how  ebul 
liently  enthusiastic  he  is  when  pleased.  Shake 
speare  awoke  in  him  a  not  utterly  dissimilar 
enthusiasm.  To  the  attraction  of  feminine  influ 
ence  Lowell  was  always  open.  Engaged  to  Maria 
White,  he  responded  for  years  to  the  powerful 
stimulus  which  her  temperament  and  nature 
exerted  upon  his.  At  a  later  period,  Frances 
Dunlop,  a  woman  ot  fine  distinction  of  mind, 
came  into  his  life  to  fill  that  void  which  the  death  of 
his  first  wile  had  left.  Many  of  his  most  delightful 
letters  were  written  to  women.  One  notices  that 
during  his  last  years  his  correspondence  is  more 
and  more  devoted  to  his  feminine  friends,  the 
delicate  responsiveness  of  whose  sympathy  he 
doubtless  felt  answered  to  his  needs.  "I  always 
thirst  after  affection,  and  depend  more  on  the 
expression  of  it  than  is  altogether  wise."2 

This  dependence,  it  is  fair  to  suggest,  seems  not 
to  be  a  necessity  to  Lowell  in  this  direction  alone. 
One  remembers  his  letter  quoted  above:  "People 
find  me  amusing  but  the  reaction  always  sets  in 
the  moment  I  am  left  to  myself."  These  confes 
sions  suggest  an  important  question:  Was  Lowell 

1  Letters,  i.,  40.  2  Ibid.,  ii.,  76. 


4 

LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER    37 

sufficient  unto  himself?  Did  he  stand  in  need  of 
impulses  from  without  in  order  not  merely  to 
maintain  an  equable  mood  but  to  awaken  that 
activity  within  him  which  found  expression  in  his 
more  important  literary  work?  Whichever  way 
we  answer  this  question  it  is  certain  that  influences 
quite  outside  himself  played  a  notably  large  part 
in  Lowell's  life.  His  first  poem  of  any  worth  is 
evoked  by  his  position  as  class  poet.  He  abandons 
the  law  only  to  resume  it  because  he  is  impelled 
to  emulation  by  the  oratory  of  Webster.  He  falls 
under  the  spell  of  Maria  White  and  her  ideas 
become  his.  Her  pet  interest,  abolitionism,  be 
comes  his  pet  interest,  until  with  her  declining 
health  he  is  thrown  more  into  contact  with  his 
circle  of  acquaintances  in  Cambridge.  His  ardor 
cools  and  he  decides  in  1850  not  to  "glance  towards 
reform"  in  his  new  poem,  The*  Nooning.  The 
Mexican  War  evokes  his  first  popular  poetic 
work,  the  Biglow  Papers,  just  as  the  Civil  War,  by 
demanding  the  lives  of  some  dear  ones  among  his 
kin,  furnishes  the  impulse  for  the  second  series  of 
the  same  work.  His  first  effective  criticism  he 
prepares  to  fulfill  his  obligations  to  the  Lowell 
Institute,  and  he  studies  hard  in  the  field  of  lin 
guistics  in  his  capacity  of  professor  at  Harvard. 
The  Atlantic  Monthly  stimulates  him  to  hard  work 
and  to  some  production,  and  it  is  while  editor  of 
the  North  American  that  he  writes  the  most  of  his 
critical  essays  and  political  papers.  The  demands 


38  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

of  occasion  produce  nearly  all  the  remaining  prose 
writings  which  are  now  among  his  published  works. 
In  poetry,  those  three  odes  which  may  be  con 
sidered  his  opera  magna  are  the  fruit  of  occasion. 
Is  it  too  much  to  conclude  that  Lowell  showed  a 
/marked  dependence  on  stimuli  outside  of  himself 
and  that  such  dependence  pomts  to  a  source  of 
weakness?1 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  Lowell  was 
an  enthusiast.  Men  and  things  that  he  likes,  he 
likes  superlatively.  When  he  changes  his  opin 
ions,  he  becomes  as  enthusiastic  on  the  new  side 
as  on  the  old.  He  sneers  at  Emerson  and  then 
worships  him;  laughs  at  abolitionism,  then  makes 
it  a  fetish  for  years  ;  attacks  the  Confederate  States 
bitterly  for  treachery,2  and  then  compliments 
them  for  their  devotion  to  the  cause  they  believed 
right;  flings  sarcasm  at  the  English  aristocracy3 
and  then  pays  them  charming  compliments  in  his 
address  on  Democracy.  There  is  no  purgatory 
with  Lowell.  Perhaps  there  was  more  than  a 
grain  of  truth  in  Poe's  declaration  that  Lowell  was 
a  "fanatic  in  whatever  circumstances  you  place 


This  enthusiasm  of    Lowell's  did  not  destroy 

1  Lowell  "  liked  to  have  some  one  help  him  idle  the  time 
away,  and  keep  him  as  long  as  possible  from  his  work."  How- 
ells,  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance,  p.  213. 

3  Works,  v.,  80.  3  Ibid.,  v.,  214. 

<  Poe's  Works  (Stoddard's  Edition),  vi.,  240. 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   39 

that  basic  conservatism  which  was  his  heritage 
from  his  New  England  ancestry.  "Lowell  was 
at  heart,  as  by  temperament,  a  conservative," 
says  his  friend  Curtis.  "I  was  always  a  natural 
Tory,"  Lowell  himself  confesses.  In  his  younger 
days  he  attended  an  anti-slavery  convention  in 
Boston  (May,  1844),  in  which  a  vote  for  disunion 
was  carried.  Enthusiastic  abolitionist  though  he 
was,  Lowell  voted  against  the  measure.  He  did 
not  want  secession  nor  did  he  want  war,  and  as 
late  as  January,  1861,  his  tone  is  that  of  a  man 
who  cannot  convince  himself  that  the  govern 
ment  he  has  known  and  always  taken  for  granted 
is  on  the  eve  of  a  mortal  struggle.  Devoted 
though  he  was  to  Emerson  personally,  he  never 
became  deeply  impregnated  with  transcendental 
ism  and  pictured  it  with  broad  humor  in  his  essay 
on  Thoreau.  He  was  a  friendl  and  admirer  of 
Agassiz,  but  that  phase  of  nineteenth  century 
science  which  we  call  evolutionism  awakened  his 
distrust.  He  feared  it  might  usurp  the  place  of 
"that  set  of  higher  instincts  which  mankind  have 
found  solid  under  their  feet  in  all  weathers."1 
His  address  on  Democracy  is  essentially  a  plea  for 
conservatism.  Accept  your  government  as  it  is,  he 
advises ;  make  it  a  good  government  by  being  your 
selves  as  individuals  honest,  unselfish,  and  patriotic. 

1  Letters,  ii.,  245.  Cf .  ibid.,  ii.,  168.  Cf.  also,  ibid.,  ii., 
325:  "I  am  a  conservative  (warranted  to  wash),  and  keep  on 
the  safe  side — with  God  as  against  Evolution." 


40  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Interested  as  Lowell  was  in  politics,  he  showed 
his  interest  by  active  participation  on  only  one 
occasion.  He  wrote  numerous  political  papers 
whose  appeal  could  be  only  to  the  cultured  elect. 
His  political  ideas  were  all  in  the  large.  They  were 
the  ideas  of  a  man  who  loves, 

"Walled  with  silent  books, 
To  hear  nor  heed  the  world's  unmeaning  noise, 
Safe  in  my  fortress  stored  with  lifelong  joys." 

Lowell  knew  men,  in  fact,  far  less  from  personal 
contact  than  from  commune  with  those  same 
"silent  books."  When  he  starts  a  magazine  he 
wants  to  educate  the  public  by  telling  it  that  all 
the  other  magazines  serve  up  "thrice-diluted 
trash"  which  tends  to  the  "deterioration  of  every 
moral  and  intellectual  faculty."  One  would 
hardly  regard  this  as  the  attitude  of  a  man  who 
understood  human  nature.  When  he  attempts 
to  write  a  serio-comic  poem  called  Our  Own  (1853) 
for  Putnam's,  he  heads  it  with  quotations  from  the 
Greek,  Latin,  and  English,  has  a  digression  in 
imitation  of  Spenser,  ambles  carelessly  along  at 
his  own  sweet  will,  and  then  feels  hurt  when  the 
poem  fails.  "I  doubt  if  your  magazine,"  he 
writes  the  editor,  "will  become  really  popular  if 
you  edit  it  for  the  mob."  The  implication  is  too 
evident  to  be  missed.  His  letters,  delightful 
though  they  are,  give  us  no  penetrating  psycho- 


LOWELL:  THE  MAN  AND  THE  WRITER   41 

logical  glimpses  of  men  or  women  he  knew.  Even 
when  writing  of  his  father,  of  whom  his  knowledge 
must  have  been  the  most  intimate,  he  gets  no 
deeper  than  his  simplicity  and  magnanimity.  It 
will  be  interesting  to  keep  all  this  in  mind  when 
studying  Lowell's  critical  essays. 

Here  is  Lowell  then,  with  his  moods,  grave  or 
gay;  his  sensitiveness  to  impressions,  which  be 
came  at  times  so  acute  as  to  objectify  his  imagin 
ings  ;  a  susceptibility  to  the  beauty  of  women  and 
to  the  responsive  sympathy  of  their  nature;  a 
need  of  stimulation  from  outside  himself;  an 
enthusiasm  which  was  not  dampened  even  with 
changes  of  opinion;  abiding  conservatism  and  a 
knowledge  of  human  nature  which  was  limited — 
the  offspring  of  multitudinous  books  rather  than 
of  contact  with  men. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE 

ALL  his  life  Lowell  was  a  voluminous  reader. 
In  college  he  "made  friendships"  with  books 
''that  have  lasted  me  for  life."  He  covered 
"such  diverse  works  as  Terence,  Hume,  Smollett, 
the  Anthologia  Grasca,  Hakluyt,  Boileau,  Scott, 
and  Southey."1  This  bent  for  reading  continued 
all  his  life.  He  wrote  in  1854:  "I  am  one  of 
the  last  of  the  great  readers,"  and  adds  that  he 
studied  "an  incredible  number  of  hours"  every 
day.  He  had  a  large  fund  of  intellectual  curiosity, 
for  as  early  as  1836  he  said:  "Milton  has  excited 
my  ambition  to  read  all  the  Greek  and  Latin 
classics  which  he  did." 

In  Greek  and  Latin  he  received  a  good  training 
at  Mr.  Wells'  school  and  he  continued  these 
studies  all  through  college.  In  fact,  Latin,  Greek, 
and  mathematics  were  the  chief  studies  in  the 
curriculum  at  Harvard  in  Lowell's  time.  He 
seems  to  have  had  a  good  command  of  these  lan 
guages  although  he  protested  strongly  that  the 

1  Scudder,  i.,  32 

42 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     43 

great  authors  of  antiquity  should  not  be  "degraded 
from  teachers  of  thinking  to  drillers  in  grammar, 
and  made  the  ruthless  pedagogues  of  root  and 
inflection,  instead  of  companions  for  whose  society 
the  mind  must  put  on  her  highest  mood.  .  .  . 
What  concern  have  we  with  the  shades  of  dialect 
in  Homer  or  Theocritus,  provided  they  speak  the 
spiritual  lingua  franca  that  abolishes  all  alienage  of 
race,  and  makes  whatever  shore  of  time  we  land 
on  hospitable  and  homelike?"1  This  last  sen 
tence  throws  light  on  Lowell's  attitude  towards 
all  literatures:  they  are  great  in  so  far  as  they 
appeal  to  what  is  universal  in  men  by  transcending 
the  bounds  of  time  and  place  and  circumstance. 
The  classic  tongues  are  not  dead,  since  in  them  so 
much  that  is  living  has  been  written.2  They 
are  surcharged  with  life  as  "perhaps  no  other 
writing,  except  Shakespeare's,  ever  was  or  will  be." 
How  great  are  Plato  and  Aristotle !  They  are  the 
masters  of  those  who  know.  Greek  literature 
is  "the  most  fruitful  comment  on  our  own." 
Translation  from  the  Greek  into  English,  he  says, 
is  invaluable  for  securing  a  mastery  of  our  own 
tongue,  and  he  inquires  what  great  mind  since 
the  Renaissance  has  failed  to  be  saturated  with 
Greek  literature. 

The  Greeks,  he  asserts,  "must  furnish  us  with 
our  standard  of  comparison,"  and  from  their 
literature  more  clearly  than  from  any  other  source 

1  Works,  iii.,  33.  2  Ibid.,  vi.f  165. 


44  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

are  to  be  deduced  "the  laws  of  proportion,  of 
design."  He  maintains  that  the  persistence  of 
poets  in  endeavoring  to  reproduce  Greek  tragedy 
is  owing  to  a  superstition  regarding  Greek  and 
Latin  which  is  a  heritage  from  the  revival  of 
learning.  The  "  simple  and  downright  way  of 
thinking"  of  the  Greeks,  "loses  all  its  savor  when 
we  assume  it  to  ourselves  by  an  effort  of  thought. " J 

Lowell  would  not  be  understood  as  denying  the 
value  or  the  beauty  of  Greek  tragedy.  His 
insistence  was  on  our  making  literature  the 
immediate  reflex  of  a  civilization  in  which,  with 
its  manifold  phases,  we  have  a  share  and  in  which, 
ultimately,  we  put  our  faith.  There  is  no  art 
without  life;  no  life  without  a  simple  faith  in  the 
times  of  which  it  is  the  expression.  Greek  drama 
was  "primarily  Greek  and  secondarily  human," 
and  though  it  makes  a  steady  appeal  yields  an 
even  wider  dominion  to  Shakespearean  tragedy.2 
"There  is  nothing  in  ancient  art  to  match  Shake 
speare."3 

Lowell  finds  Aristophanes  to  be  "beyond  ques 
tion  the  highest  type  of  pure  comedy, "  and  brings 
home  his  contention  about  the  perennially  human 
in  Greek  literature,  by  declaring  that  he  is  "by 
the  vital  and  essential  qualities  of  his  humorous 
satire  .  .  .  more  nearly  our  contemporary  than 
Moliere."4  For  ^Eschylus  he  has  intense  regard, 

1  Works,  ii.f  136.  2  Ibid.,  iv.,  232,  and  iii.,  65. 

*  Ibid.,  i.,  212.  .  4  Ibid.,  iii.,  64. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE      45 

declaring  that  he  "  soars  over  the  other  Greek 
tragedians  like  an  eagle."1  Nearly  all  the  refer 
ences  in  Lowell  to  Greek  literature  are  concerned 
with  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  and  Aris 
tophanes.  His  intimacy  with  these  appears  in  his 
essay  on  Shakespeare,  where  he  points  out  similari 
ties  between  their  dramas  and  Shakespeare's,  and 
cites  parallel  passages,  quoting  from  the  original 
Greek.  Lowell  gives  frequent  mention  to  Homer, 
and  tells  us  that  he  prefers  the  Odyssey  to  the  Iliad; 
but  he  goes  into  no  serious  discussion  as  to  the 
sources  of  Homer's  power. 

Lowell  evidently  did  not  get  to  feel  that  final 
intimacy  with  Greek  which  makes  a  language  part 
of  oneself;  for  he  speaks  of  divining  a  certain 
resemblance  between  Shakespeare  and  ^Eschylus 
"through  the  mists  of  a  language  which  will  not 
let  me  be  sure  of  what  I  see.  "a  , 

While  Lowell  praised  highly  the  study  of  Latin 
as  well  as  of  Greek,  he  expresses  no  uncertain 
opinion  about  Latin  literature  in  his  essay  on 
Chaucer: 

It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  Roman  literature, 
always  a  half-hardy  exotic,  could  ripen  the  seeds 
of  living  reproduction.  The  Roman  genius  was 
eminently  practical  and  far  more  apt  for  the  triumphs 
of  politics  and  jurisprudence  than  of  art.  Supreme 
elegance  it  could  and  did  arrive  at  in  Virgil,  but  .  .  . 

1  Works,  ii.,  126.  a  Ibid.,  iii.,  45. 


46  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

it  produced  but  one  original  poet  .  .  .  Horace  .  .  . 
There  are  a  half  dozen  pieces  of  Catullus  unsurpassed 
...  for  lyric  grace  and  fanciful  tenderness  .  .  . 
One  profound  imagination,  one  man,  who  with  a 
more  prosperous  subject  might  have  been  a  great  poet, 
lifted  Roman  literature  above  its  ordinary  level  of 
tasteful  common-sense.  * 

This  poet  was  Lucretius.  Horace  was  the  "poet 
of  social  life,"  whose  best  work  had  point,  com 
pactness,  and  urbane  tone.  He  pierces  through 
the  hedge  of  language  and,  a  cosmopolitan,  makes 
a  wide  appeal.2  Virgil  had  art  and  power  "not 
only  of  being  strong  in  parts,  but  of  making  those 
parts  coherent  in  an  harmonious  whole  and  tribu 
tary  to  it."  Tacitus  is  mentioned  several  times 
in  a  way  that  suggests  how  intimate  was  Lowell's 
knowledge  of  his  work.  Ovid  was  apparently  not 
a  favorite  with  the  critic,  who  declared  that  if  the 
poet  "instead  of  sentimentalizing  in  the  Tristia 
had  left  behind  him  a  treatise  on  the  language  of 
the  Getae  ...  we  should  have  thanked  him  for 
something  more  truly  valuable  than  all  his  poems."8 
But  he  is  alive  to  Ovid's  influence:  "The  only 
Latin  poet  who  can  be  supposed  to  have  influenced 
the  spirit  of  medieval  literature  is  Ovid."4  In  a 
letter  to  C.  E.  Norton,  he  expressed  satisfaction  on 
studying  Lucan  again,  "since  I  bethought  me  for 

1  Works,  iii.,  305  ff.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  252;  iv.,  282;  266. 

*  Ibid.,  i.,  121.  ^  Ibid.,  iii.,  301. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     47 

the  first  time  that  Lucan  was  the  true  protoge- 
nist  of  the  concettisti."  *  In  much  the  same  way, 
when  speaking  of  modern  sentimentalism,  Lowell 
suggests  that  a  tendency  towards  it  began  with 
Euripides  and  Ovid.  As  in  the  case  of  the  Greek 
writers,  so  too  with  the  Latins :  Lowell  always  has 
them  within  ready  reach  of  his  retentive  memory. 
This  fine  memory  of  Lowell's  was  indeed  a  sine 
qua  non  for  one  who  was  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of 
languages  as  wide  as  his.  His  acquaintance  with 
French,  German,  Italian,  and  Spanish,  he  perfected 
by  residence  in  Europe  which  extended  in  all  over 
many  years.  He  gave  courses  at  various  times 
during  his  professorship  in  German,  Spanish,  Old 
French,  and  in  Dante.  He  went  thoroughly  into 
the  Early  English  Text  Society's  series  and  wrote 
in  1874: 

I  have  now  reached  the  point  where  I  feel  sure  enough 
of  myself  in  Old  French  and  Old  English  to  make  my 
corrections  with  a  pen  instead  of  a  pencil  as  I  go 
along.  Ten  hours  a  day,  on  an  average,  I  have  been 
at  it  for  the  last  two  months,  and  get  so  absorbed 
that  I  turn  grudgingly  to  anything  else. 

German,  Lowell  wrote  in  1875,  "is  the  open 
sesame  to  a  large  culture. "  It  made  many  things 
in  English  literature  clearer  to  him  and  was  very 
interesting  for  its  own  sake.  To  only  one  German 

1  Letters,  ii.,  333.  Allusions  like  those  in  Letters,  i.,  14,  367, 
377,  and  396  are  eloquent  of  Lowell's  intimacy  with  the  classics. 


48  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

writer,  however,  did  Lowell  devote  a  literary  study : 
he  contributed  an  article  on  Lessing  to  the  North 
American  Review  for  April,  1867.  Goethe  he 
alludes  to  frequently  and  in  a  way  which  shows  a 
close  knowledge  and  a  deep  admiration.  Lowell 
calls  him  "the  last  of  the  great  poets,"  and  the 
"most  widely  receptive  of  critics";  but  he  "often 
fails  in  giving  artistic  coherence  to  his  longer 
works. ' '  x  Though  the  * '  figure  of  Goethe  is  grand ' ' 
and  "rightfully  preeminent,"  Lowell  gives  us  no 
study  of  him — only  obiter  dicta.  The  occasional 
reference  to  Schiller  or  Richter  or  Heine,  with  his 
"airy  humor"  and  "sense  of  form"  and  "profound 
pathos,"  only  surprises  one  the  more  at  the  com 
paratively  slight  impression  which  German  liter 
ature  seems  to  have  made  on  Lowell. 2 

German  scholarship  he  regarded  with  divided 
feelings.  He  acknowledged  the  "  admirable  thor 
oughness  of  the  German  intellect,"  which  has 
"supplied  the  raw  material  in  almost  every  branch 
of  science  for  the  defter  wits  of  other  nations  to 
work  on . "  But  German  criticism, ' '  by  way  of  being 
profound,  too  often  burrows  in  delighted  darkness 
quite  beneath  its  subject,  till  the  reader  feels  the 
ground  hollow  beneath  him,  and  is  fearful  of  cav 
ing  into  unknown  depths  of  stagnant  metaphysic 
air  at  every  step. ' ' 3  Yet  he  finds  German  criticism 

1  Works,  ii.,  167. 

3  Cf.  Publications  of  the  Mod.  Lang.  Ass 'n  of  America,  vol.  vii., 
p.  25  ff.  *  Works,  ii.,  163. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     49 

preeminent  in  penetration  though  "  seldom  lucid 
and  never  entertaining.  It  may  turn  its  light,  if  we 
have  patience,  into  every  obscurest  cranny  of  its 
subject  .  .  .  but  it  never  flashes  light  out  of  the 
subject  itself,  as  Sainte-Beuve  ...  so  often  does, 
and  with  such  unexpected  charm."1 

In  the  field  of  French  literature,  Rousseau  repre 
sents  Lowell's  only  essay.  But  his  work  neverthe 
less  is  rich  in  allusions  and  comparisons  such  as 
would  be  possible  only  to  one  to  whom  French 
literature  was  an  intimate  possession.  This  is 
especially  true  in  his  essay  on  Dryden  where  in  dis 
cussing  French  versification  he  points  out  defects 
in  lines  from  Corneille's  Cinna,  which  "  Voltaire 
.  .  .  does  not  notice  ...  in  his  minute  comment 
on  this  play" ;  in  his  essay  on  Pope  and  in  that  on 
Chaucer,  where  his  knowledge  of  Old  French  liter 
ature  is  made  to  throw  light  upon  the  interesting 
question  of  Chaucer's  indebtedness  "for  poetical 
suggestion  or  literary  culture."  When  he  comes 
to  discuss  the  sounding  of  final  and  medial  e  in 
Chaucer,  he  at  once  appeals  to  Marie  de  France 
and  Wace  and  the  Roman  de  la  Rose. 

Of  his  Dante,  his  longest  and  most  ambitious 
essay  in  criticism,  Lowell  said  it  was  the  result 
of  twenty  years  of  study.  On  reading  the  essay 
one  cannot  but  be  impressed  with  the  amount  of 
matter  he  has  accumulated.  One  begins  to  under 
stand  why  his  Dante  classes  at  college  were  his 

1  Works,  ii.,  1 66. 


50  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

best.  He  has  left  no  point  untouched,  from  a 
consideration  of  German,  French,  and  English 
studies  of  Dante,  down  to  a  suggestion  that  Dante 
may  have  been  influenced  by  the  doctrine  of  the 
Oriental  Sufis.  Lowell's  admiration  for  the  great 
poet  is  eloquent  throughout  the  essay.  As  for 
Petrarch,  poet  and  humanist,  the  critic  concedes 
to  him  a  wide  influence  on  modern  literature,  due 
to  the  "charm  of  elegance,"  but  finds  his  famous 
sonnets  inferior  to  those  of  Michael  Angelo. 
Petrarch  he  calls  the  first  great  sentimentalist, 
whose  emotion  demands  of  us  to  shiver  before  a 
painted  flame.1  Boccaccio  receives  scarcely  a 
mention  save  as  the  biographer  of  Dante.  But  in 
a  letter  to  Norton,  Lowell  says : 

I  have  read  Boccaccio  nearly  through  since  commence 
ment — I  mean  the  Decameron,  in  order  to  appreciate 
his  style.  I  find  it  very  charming,  and  him  clearly 
the  forerunner  of  modern  prose.  A  singular  sweet 
ness,  ease,  and  grace.  Nothing  came  near  it  for 
centuries. 

Just  as  in  Italian  literature  Lowell  was  con 
cerned  with  the  great  figures,  so  too  in  the  liter 
ature  of  Spain.  His  Spanish  course  at  Harvard 
was  concerned  mostly  with  Don  Quixote.  He 
devoted,  strange  to  say,  none  of  his  essays  to 
Spanish  literature,  and  the  address  on  Don  Quixote 
at  the  Working  Men's  College,  London,  is  little 

1  Works,  ii.,  253  ff.  passim. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     51 

more  than  a  "few  illustrative  comments  on  his  one 
immortal  book."  If  Lowell  knew  his  Cervantes 
more  minutely  than  his  Calderon,  the  dramatist  is 
closer  to  his  heart.1  As  a  dramatist:  "For  fasci 
nation  of  style  and  profound  suggestion,  it  would 
be  hard  to  name  another  author  superior  to  Cal 
deron,  if  indeed  equal  to  him."2  He  writes  in  one 
of  his  letters:  "Calderon  is  surely  one  of  the  most 
marvelous  of  poets,"  and  again  as  late  as  1890: 
"There  are  greater  poets,  but  none  so  constantly 
delightful."  That  Spanish  dramatist  whose  fec 
undity  has  always  been  a  marvel,  is  passed  over 
in  all  but  utter  silence.  The  most  Lowell  has  to 
say  about  him  occurs  in  a  letter  written  in  1889: 
"I  have  done  some  reading  in  Lope  de  Vega,  but 
am  not  drawn  to  him  or  by  him  as  to  and  by  Cal 
deron.  Yet  he  is  wonderful  too  in  his  way. " 

There  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  advantages 
which  a  knowledge  of  many  literatures  brought  to 
Lowell.3  It  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  secure 
standards  for  judgment  and  bases  for  comparison. 
But  the  comparisons  are  seldom  expressed  except 
in  obiter  fashion.  Shakespeare's  use  of  language  is 
compared  with  that  of  the  Greek  tragedians; 
Greek  drama  with  the  modern;  Shakespeare  with 

1  Vide  "Nightingale  in  the  Study,"  Poetical  Works,  iii.,  282. 

*  Works,  vi.,  1 1 6. 

J  "  I  think  that  to  know  the  literature  of  another  language  .  .  . 
gives  us  the  prime  benefits  of  foreign  travel." — Latest  Literary 
Essays,  p.  139. 


52  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Dante  as  to  preeminent  qualities;  Voltaire  with 
Pope  "as  an  author  with  whom  the  gift  of  writing 
was  primary  and  that  of  verse  secondary";  Chau 
cer  and  Dante  are  compared  and  contrasted — the 
most  ambitious  of  these  ventures.  But  these  and 
similar  instances  by  their  very  infrequency  only 
impress  one  with  what  might  be  and  is  not.  For 
the  most  part  Lowell's  comparisons  are  of  writers 
within  the  same  literature  and  that  in  English, 
as  Milton  with  Shakespeare,  Dry  den  with  Pope, 
Byron  with  Wordsworth  and  Keats.  He  wearies 
quickly  of  sustained  comparison  and  seems  eager 
to  have  done  with  it.  Usually  the  reference  to  a 
second  literature  is  to  furnish  either  an  illustration 
of  a  single  quality  in  the  writer  under  discussion  or 
a  quotation  bearing  on  the  point  at  issue.  He 
says  for  example :  Dry  den's  "obiter  dicta  have  often 
the  penetration,  and  always  more  than  the  equity, 
of  Voltaire's,  for  Dryden  never  loses  temper,  and 
never  altogether  qualifies  his  judgment  by  his  self- 
love.  "J  Lowell,  like  Goethe,  regards  Samson 
Agonistes  as  the  "most  successful  attempt  at 
reproducing  the  Greek  tragedy."  He  adds: 
"Goethe  admits  that  it  alone,  among  modern 
works,  has  caught  life  from  the  breath  of  the 
antique  spirit."2  The  Iphigenie,  Lowell  implies, 
is  a  failure.  But  he  does  not  compare  Milton's 
drama  directly  with  Goethe's  to  show  the  reason 
why,  although  such  a  comparison  would  have 
1  Works,  iii.,  179.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  133. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE      53 

tended  to  bring  out  clearly  the  reasons  for  Milton's 
success  and  Goethe's  failure,  and  to  lend  more 
color  to  the  critic's  contention  that  the  employ 
ment  of  essentially  Greek  subjects  or  the  imitation 
of  Greek  forms  is  foredoomed  to  failure.  With 
such  exceptional  equipment  as  Lowell  possessed, 
it  seems  strange  that  he  did  not  venture  further 
than  the  mere  confines  of  comparative  criticism. 
It  may  be  that  he  deliberately  held  back. 

Outside  of  English  literature,  his  allusions  to 
important  figures  of  the  nineteenth  century  are 
mostly  confined  to  the  French,  and  these  are  scant 
enough:  Victor  Hugo  is  the  "greatest  living 
representative"  of  sentimentalism,  and,  "con 
vinced  that,  as  founder  of  the  French  Romantic 
School,  there  is  a  kind  of  family  likeness  between 
himself  and  Shakespeare,  stands  boldly  forth  to 
prove  the  father  as  extrava'gant  as  the  son."1 
Sainte-Beuve  makes  his  subject  luminous2;  Balzac 
(who  gets  no  mention  in  his  works)  is  said  in  his 
letters  to  yield  "to  the  temptation  of  melodrama" 
and  to  be  inferior  to  Charles  de  Bernard  in  knowl 
edge  of  the  great  world. 3 

In  English  literature  Lowell  has  turned  his 
attention  somewhat  to  the  nineteenth  century  and 
has  come  down  beyond  Keats  and  Wordsworth  to 
consider  a  few  of  his  contemporaries.  But  Carlyle, 
Thoreau,  Swinburne,  and  Landor  were  by  no  means 
his  most  important  essays  either  in  length  or  in 

1  Works,  iii.,  63.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  166.  a  Letters,  ii.,  429. 


54  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

soundness  of  judgment.  His  attention  was  cen 
tred  upon  established  classics  and  that  atten 
tion,  as  shown  in  his  essays,  was  for  the  most 
part  devoted  to  the  classics  of  English  literature  in 
the  domain  of  poetry. 

From  Chaucer  down  his  essays  on  the  great  poets 
form  a  history  of  English  poetical  literature. 
Beginning  with  Chaucer  he  has  sketched  that 
poet's  sources  "for  poetical  suggestion  or  literary 
culture:  the  Latins,  the  Troubadours,  the  Trou- 
v&res,  and  the  Italians,"  and  in  the  course  of  the 
essay  touches  on  Gower  and  Langland.  In 
Spenser  he  goes  into  a  consideration  of  English 
poetry  from  the  death  of  Chaucer  to  the  rise  of 
Spenser.  The  fifteenth  century  is  a  barren  waste 
to  Lowell's  mind.  ' '  On  the  whole,  Scottish  poetry 
of  the  fifteenth  century  has  more  meat  in  it  than 
the  English, "  and  he  pauses  to  consider  Dunbar, 
B arbour,  and  Gawain  Douglas.  He  then  takes 
up  Skelton,  Gascoigne,  Wyatt,  and  Surrey,  whose 
verse  is  "flat,  thin,  and  regular,"  touches  on  the 
ballad,  discusses  Sidney,  bestows  considerable 
space  and  praise  on  Dray  ton  and  Daniel,  and  then, 
after  this  rapid  survey  in  twenty  pages,  is  ready  for 
a  lengthy  consideration  of  Spenser.  Taking  up 
next  the  study  of  Shakespeare,  Lowell  touches 
upon  the  condition  of  things  in  the  poet's  time :  the 
exhilaration  which  followed  the  Reformation, 
the  dissemination  of  knowledge  through  printing, 
the  stimulus  of  discovery  across  the  virgin  seas, — 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     55 

those  influences,  in  a  word,  which  went  to  make 
the  English  nation  vibrant  with  energy.  The 
language  was  vital,  the  medium  of  expression  for 
big  hearts  and  keen  brains ;  and  in  London  among 
the  set  that  created  on  the  stage  of  the  metropolis 
a  new  world  of  Fancy,  Shakespeare  got  to  know 
the  very  wellsprings  of  speech. J  The  moment  was 
auspicious,  says  Lowell,  and  the  greatest  of  poets 
came  as  the  culmination  of  one  of  the  greatest  of 
literary  eras.  Milton  follows  and  bridges  over 
the  seventeenth  century  between  Shakespeare  and 
Dry  den.  Lowell,  with  his  eye  on  Masson,  pays 
less  attention  than  in  the  essays  on  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  and  Shakespeare  to  connecting  his  poet 
with  the  preceding  era.  In  Dryden  he  returns  to 
the  breadth  of  view  of  the  literary  historian.  He 
points  out  that  the  author  of  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel  had  fallen  upon  an  age  when  that  moral  dis 
integration  was  in  process  which  was  to  result  in 
scepticism;  that  Dryden  was  the  "first  of  the 
moderns";  that  he  recognized  the  Time-Spirit 
and  to  a  great  extent  worshipped  at  its  shrine. 
In  Pope  the  critic  goes  back  to  the  Restoration, 
pointing  out  the.  imitation  of  "French  manners, 
French  morals,  and,  above  all,  French  taste."2 
French  taste  and  French  principles  of  criticism 
triumphed  in  England,  he  declares,  chiefly  through 
the  championship  of  Dryden. 3  But  the  upheaval 
of  allegiance  and  political  ideas  had  left  English 

1  Works,  iii.,  7  ff.  a  Ibid.,  iv.,  1 1 .  »  Ibid.,  iv.,  16. 


56  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

minds  open  to  the  influx  of  new — and  French- 
ideas.  Precision  and  finesse  usurped  the  place 
of  imagination.  Religion  became  a  badge  of 
party;  scepticism  lay  at  the  root  of  faith.1  We 
now  have  the  age  of  Pope.  Thus  far,  among 
the  great  English  poets  who  preceded  him,  we 
have  seen  "actual  life  represented  by  Chaucer, 
imaginative  life  by  Spenser,  ideal  life  by  Shake 
speare,  the  interior  life  by  Milton;  .  .  .  conven 
tional  life  .  .  .  found  or  made  a  most  fitting 
[poet]  in  Pope."2 

In  Gray,  Lowell  gives  a  backward  glance  at 
Milton  and  at  Dryden  who,  though  only  twenty- 
three  years  younger  than  Milton,  "  belongs  to 
another  world."  Dryden,  already  the  subject  of 
an  earlier  essay,  is  too  interesting  a  figure  in 
Lowell's  eyes  to  be  passed  over  in  silence,  and 
after  touching  on  his  style  and  his  manner,  the 
critic  points  out  the  self-satisfaction,  the  moral 
elbowroom,  the  acceptance  of  things  as  they  are, 
which  belonged  to  the  eighteenth  century.  With 
all  its  supposed  lack  of  inspiration,  the  century 
produced  Addison  and  Pope,  Fielding  and  Sterne, 
Goldsmith  and  Gray.  "Toward  the  middle  of 
the  century  .  .  .  two  books  were  published  .  .  . 
Dodsley's  Old  Plays  (1744)  and  Percy's  Ballads 
(J765),M  which  "gave  the  first  impulse  to  the 
romantic  reaction  against  a  miscalled  classicism, 
and  were  the  seed  of  the  literary  renaissance."3 

1  Works,  iv.,  19.     *  Ibid.,  iv.,  25.     3  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  12. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     57 

Wordsworth  and  Keats  bring  the  history  of  English 
poetic  literature  into  the  nineteenth  century. 

All  this  is  of  value  and  one  gets  from  a  study  of 
these  essays  a  wide  general  view  of  the  history 
of  English  poetical  literature  from  Chaucer  down. 
One  feels  throughout  that  Lowell  has  read  e very- 
poet  he  discusses,  however  far  he  may  be  from 
the  main  highway  of  poetry.  But  one  may  charge 
the  critic  with  vagueness  of  expression  if  not  of 
thought,  with  lack  of  consecuity  in  arrangement 
of  matter,  with  contradictions,  omissions,  and 
errors  which  one  finds  it  sometimes  difficult  to 
distinguish  as  of  fact  or  of  judgment.  He  speaks, 
for  example,  of  the  "amalgamation  of  the  Saxon, 
Norman,  and  scholarly  elements  of  English" 
being  brought  about  by  the  Elizabethan  stage, 
and  declares  that  Shakespeare  was  "doubly  for 
tunate*'  in  being  "  Saxon  by  the  father  and  Nor 
man  by  the  mother."1  One  draws  the  inference 
that  there  still  existed  about  the  last  quarter  of  the 
sixteenth  century  a  divorce  between  the  Saxon 
and  Norman  elements  in  blood  and  speech.  One 
feels  awakened  in  one's  mind  an  uncomfortable 
doubt  about  Lowell's  historical  accuracy;  a  con 
viction  that  he  had  forgotten  Chaucer,  in  whom 
"we  see  the  first  result  of  the  Norman  yeast  upon 
the  home-baked  Saxon  loaf, "  and  who  "found  his 
native  tongue  a  dialect  and  left  it  a  language."2 
In  Dryden,  the  critic  gives  a  false  impression  of  the 

1  Works,  iii.,  7.  *  Ibid.,  iii.,321  and  329. 


58  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

facts  of  literary  history  when  he  says:  "In  1678, 
the  public  mind  had  so  far  recovered  its  [moral] 
tone  that  Dryden's  comedy  of  Limberham  was 
barely  tolerated  for  three  nights."  To  leave  this 
statement  uncircumstanced  is  to  make  it  almost 
impossible  to  understand  how  Vanbrugh's  Relapse 
could  have  triumphed  on  the  London  stage  in  1696. 
In  Pope  Lowell  first  discusses  the  Romantic  move 
ment  of  the  eighteenth  century;  then  turns  for 
a  page  to  Pope  who  was  lauded  by  Voltaire  and 
whose  fame  was  European;  then  refers  to  conti 
nental  Romanticism;  next  discusses  the  school  of 
Boileau,  a  topic  which  reminds  him  that  "a 
century  earlier  the  School  of  Cultists  had  estab 
lished  a  dominion."  The  Cultists  next  engage 
his  attention;  they  had  their  day  and  "went  down 
before  the  implacable  good  sense  of  French  criti 
cism";  an  analogy  exists  between  cultism  and 
the  style  of  Pope,  for  whose  arrival  "circumstances 
had  prepared  the  way."  Then  follows  a  dis 
cussion  of  the  Restoration,  of  English  sensitiveness 
to  ridicule  as  shown  even  in  Shakespeare's  time, 
and  of  Caroline  licentiousness.  Next  Dryden 
is  taken  up  and  the  sceptical  turn  of  the  later 
seventeenth  century;  the  influence  of  French 
criticism  on  the  English  literature  of  the  day  is 
gone  into,  correctness  is  touched  on,  and  at  last, 
after  twenty-four  pages,  we  come  to  the  main 
point — a  consideration  of  Pope.  Such  lack  of 
consecuity  does  not  impugn  Lowell's  knowledge, 


RANGE  OP  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     59 

which  in  its  important  phases  is  sound ;  but  it  does 
tend  to  lessen  its  value  to  the  reader,  who  not 
unnaturally  comes  to  suspect  as  but  partially 
assimilated  that  knowledge  which  is  presented  in 
so  confused  a  way. 

Sins  of  omission  and  errors  of  fact  are  not  want 
ing  in  Lowell.  The  importance  of  the  Lyrical 
Ballads  is  passed  over  with  the  remark  that  they 
attempted  a  reform  in  poetry.1  The  famous 
Prefaces  gain  no  consideration  beyond  the  state 
ment  that  Wordsworth  shifted  his  ground  some 
what  in  theory  and  notably  in  practice.2  Lowell 
says  nothing  about  Wordsworth's  place  in  that 
Romantic  Movement  which,  taking  its  rise  during 
the  eighteenth  century,  turned  to  the  full  tide 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth.  The  place 
which  belongs  to  Wordsworth  in  the  forefront  of 
the  movement  is  given  to  Keats,  who  is  called  "the 
first  resolute  and  wilful  heretic,  the  true  founder 
of  the  modern  school,  which  admits  no  cis-Eliza- 
bethan  authority  save  Milton."3  It  would  be 
interesting  to  know  on  what  grounds  Lowell  would 
defend  this  concession  to  Keats  to  the  exclusion  of 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.  He  is  constantly 
expressing  opinions  which  he  lays  down  with  a 
finality  as  of  fact.  When  he  says,  "Dryden  was 
the  first  Englishman  who  wrote  perfectly  easy 

1  Works,  iv.,  302.  3  Ibid.,  i.,  245. 

3  Ibid.,  iii.,98.  In  Works,  i.,  245,  he  says  that  Keats'  reaction 
was  an  "unconscious  expression." 


60  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

prose,"1  one  wonders  why  he  ignored  Cowley. 
But  such  lapses  belong  properly  to  another  chapter. 
They  are  valuable  in  this  place  only  as  showing 
that  Lowell's  knowledge — and  there  can  be  no 
question  of  its  amplitude — did  not  save  him  from 
error. 

Errors  of  fact  or  of  judgment  did  not  come 
from  ignorance  of  other  critical  dicta  than  his  own. 
One  finds  echoes  of  De  Quincey,  of  Lamb,  and  of 
Hazlitt,  and  so  many  of  Coleridge  as  to  convince 
one  that  Lowell  had  steeped  his  mind  in  the  work 
of  that  master  of  criticism.  Sometimes  it  is  a 
hint  of  Coleridge's  which  Lowell  uses,  as  when  he 
compares  Spenser  and  Bunyan  in  their  allegories. 
Coleridge,  in  speaking  of  Spenser,  refers  to  Bunyan 
and  says  that  "in  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  .  .  .  the 
characters  are  real  persons  with  nicknames."2 
Says  Lowell:  "The  vast  superiority  of  Bunyan 
over  Spenser  lies  in  the  fact  that  we  help  make 
his  allegory  out  of  our  own  experience."3  The 
essays  on  Wordsworth  and  Shakespeare  are 
under  constant  obligation  to  Coleridge.  Cole 
ridge  speaks  of  the  "frequent  curiosa  felicitas 
of  his  (Wordsworth's)  diction,"  as  a  "beauty  .  .  . 
eminently  characteristic  of  his  poetry."4  Says 
Lowell:  Wordsworth's  work  is  endowed  "with 
an  unexpectedness  and  impressiveness  of  origi 
nality  such  as  we  feel  in  the  presence  of  Nature 

1  Works,  ii.,  221.  2  Coleridge's  Works,  iv.f  247  and  248. 

a  Lowell's  Works,  iv.,  322.          4  Coleridge's  Works,  iii.,49i. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     61 

herself ' ' ;  this  is  ' '  a  peculiarity  of  his. "  *  Speaking 
of  Wordsworth  in  another  place  Coleridge  says: 
He  uses  "  thoughts  and  images  too  great  for  the 
subject.  "2  Says  Lowell,  after  quoting  from  Peter 
Bell:  "One  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  similes 
of  the  huge  stone,  the  sea  beast,  and  the  cloud,  .  .  . 
are  somewhat  too  lofty  for  the  service  to  which 
they  are  put. " 3  In  Shakespeare,  Lowell's  indebt 
edness  is  none  the  less  evident.  Coleridge  calls 
Prospero  "the  very  Shakespeare  himself,  of  the 
tempest."4  Lowell  asks:  "In  Prospero  shall  we 
not  recognize  the  Artist  himself  [Shakespeare]?"5 
Says  Coleridge:  "In  other  writers  we  find  the 
particular  opinions  of  the  individual;  .  .  .  but 
Shakespeare  never  promulgates  any  party  tenets. 
He  is  always  the  philosopher  and  the  moralist."6 
Says  Lowell:  "In  estimating  Shakespeare,  it 
should  never  be  forgotten,  that  ...  he  was 
essentially  observer  and  artist,  and  incapable  of 
partisanship."7 

To  consider  but  one  more  critic  to  whom  Lowell 
is  under  obligation.  His  declaration  regarding 
character  as  "the  only  soil  in  which  real  mental 
power  can  root  itself  and  find  sustenance,"  recalls 
Carlyle's:  "Who  ever  saw,  or  will  see,  any  true 
talent,  not  to  speak  of  genius,  the  foundation  of 

1  Lowell's  Works,  iv.,  407.  2  Coleridge's  Works,  iii.,  478. 

s  Lowell's  Works,  iv.,  410.  *  Coleridge's  Works,  iv.,  75. 

s  Lowell's  Works,  iii.,  61.  6  Coleridge's  Works,  iv.,  78. 
?  Lowell's  Works,  iii.,  2. 


62  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

which  is  not  goodness,  love?"1  Says  Carlyle: 
"Johnson's  opinions  are  fast  becoming  obsolete: 
but  his  style  of  thinking  and  of  living,  we  may 
hope,  will  never  become  obsolete."2  Lowell  prob 
ably  had  that  in  mind  when  he  wrote:  "It  is  as  a 
nobly  original  man,  even  more  than  as  an  original 
thinker,  that  Lessing  is  precious  to  us,  and  that 
\  he  is  so  considerable  in  German  literature.  In  a 
higher  sense,  but  in  the  same  kind,  he  is  to  Ger 
mans  what  Dr.  Johnson  is  to  us, — admirable  for 
what  he  was."3  Considering  Rousseau  the  senti 
mentalist  and  finding  it  difficult  to  account  for 
his  undeniable  influence,  Lowell  exclaims:  "Surely 
there  must  have  been  a  basis  of  sincerity  in  this 
man  seldom  matched."4  Says  Carlyle:  "With  all 
his  drawbacks  .  .  .  [Rousseau]  has  the  first  and 
chief  characteristic  of  a  hero:  he  is  heartily  in 
earnest."5  And  so  one  might  go  on. 

One  would  hesitate  to  draw  the  conclusion  that 
Lowell  consciously  borrowed.6  He  was,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  scrupulous  about  literary  borrowing 
although  it  was  a  favorite  belief  of  his  that  an 
idea  belonged  to  him  who  expressed  it  best.  His 
reading  was  enormous  and  he  doubtless  uncon 
sciously  assimilated  phrases  and  dicta  and  com- 

1  Carlyle's  Works,  xvi.,  467.  2  Ibid.,  xiv.,  404. 

a  Lowell's  Works,  ii.,  229.  4  Ibid.,  ii.,  237. 

*  Carlyle's  Works,  xiv.,  406. 

6  He  is  charged  with  plagiarism  in  an  article  in  Lippincott's, 
vol.  vii.,  p.  641  ff. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     63 

parisons  which  grew  into  his  consciousness  as  his 
own  possessions.  For  borrowings  however  on 
the  part  of  others,  especially  of  words  and  turns 
of  phrase,  Lowell  had  a  sense  so  keen  as  to  amount 
almost  to  an  obsession.  The  following  is  typical; 
he  quotes  Dryden's  lines : 

"And  threatening  France,  placed  like  a  painted  Jove, 
Kept  idle  thunder  in  his  lifted  hand," 

and  adds  in  a  footnote: 

Perhaps  the  hint  was  given  by  a  phrase  of  Corneille, 
monarque  en  peinture.  Dryden  .  .  .  borrowed  a  great 
deal.  Thus  in  Don  Sebastian  (of  suicide) : 

"Brutus  and  Cato  might  discharge  their  souls, 
And  give  them  furloughs  for  the  other  world; 
But  we,  like  sentries,  are  obliged  to  stand 
In  starless  nights  and  wait  the  appointed  hour." 

The  thought  is  Cicero's,  but  how  it  is  intensified  by 
the  "starless  nights"!  Dryden,  I  suspect,  got  it 
from  his  favorite,  Montaigne,  who  says,  "Que  nous 
ne  pouvons  abandonner  cette  garnison  du  monde,  sans 
le  commandement  exprez  de  celuy  qui  nous  y  a  mis." 
(L.  ii.,  Chap.  3.)  In  the  same  play,  by  a  very  Dryden- 
ish  verse,  he  gives  new  force  to  an  old  comparison : 

"And  I  should  break  through  laws  divine  and  human, 
And  think  'em  cobwebs  spread  for  little  man, 
Which  all  the  bulky  herd  of  Nature  breaks."1 

1  Works,  iii.,  141. 


64  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

There  is  an  interesting  and  tempting  play  for  the 
analogical  side  of  memory  in  this  sort  of  "hunting 
of  the  letter,"  but  the  genuine  value  of  it  is  more 
than  doubtful.  Its  absurdity  becomes  apparent 
in  such  a  case  as  that  where  Lowell,  referring  to 
Dryden's  "painted  Jove,"  suspects  "that  this 
noble  image  was  suggested  by  a  verse  in  The 
Double  Marriage  [of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher]— 
'Thou  woven  Worthy  in  a  piece  of  arras.'  "J 
This  tendency  of  Lowell's  adds  new  proof — if 
any  were  wanting — of  the  range  of  his  reading 
and  of  his  keen  sense  for  the  "minutiae  of  verbal 
criticism." 

This  sense  found  a  more  profitable  channel 
when,  supported  by  his  intimate  and  wide  ac 
quaintance  with  languages  and  by  his  remarkable 
memory,  it  was  directed  into  the  field  of  linguistics. 
Lowell's  knowledge  of  linguistics  was  derived 
from  diligent  reading  in  the  classics  of  language. 
To  him  language  was  nothing  if  not  intensely 
alive.  And  a  "living  language"  with  Lowell 
meant  one  "that  is  still  hot  from  the  hearts  and 
brains  of  a  people,  not  hardened  yet,  but  moltenly 
ductile  to  new  shapes  of  sharp  and  clean  relief 
in  the  moulds  of  new  thought."2  As  a  student  of 
linguistics,  his  most  thorough-going  efforts  appear 
in  Library  of  Old  Authors  and  in  the  introduction 
to  Part  II  of  the  Biglow  Papers.  There  is  no  call 
to  go  into  a  minute  examination  of  the  etymolo- 

1  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  18  (note).  3  Works,  iii.,  6. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     65 

gies  which  Lowell  discusses.  What  most  con 
cerns  our  present  study  is  that  he  grasped  some 
important  principles  which  lie  at  the  root  of  the 
science  of  language  and  that  he  applied  them  in 
an  illuminating  way  in  many  of  his  essays. 

It  is  only  from  its  roots  in  the  living  generations 
of  men  that  a  language  can  be  reinforced  with  fresh 
vigor  for  its  needs.  .  .  .  No  language  after  it  has 
faded  into  diction,  none  that  cannot  suck  up  the  feed 
ing  juices  secreted  for  it  in  the  rich  mother-earth  of 
common  folk,  can  bring  forth  a  sound  and  lusty  book. 
True  vigor  and  heartiness  of  phrase  do  not  pass  from 
page  to  page,  but  from  man  to  man,  where  the  brain 
is  kindled  and  the  lips  suppled  by  downright  living 
interests  and  by  passion  in  its  very  throe. x 

Another  principle  which  he  has  applied  in  tracing 
etymology,  is  a  regard  for  exact  chronology;  a 
third,  the  value  of  comparing  later  forms  in  order 
to  infer  earlier  ones.  It  is  the  first  principle  with 
which  Lowell  was  most  concerned  and  on  which 
he  was  never  tired  of  insisting.  Of  Dryden,  to 
whose  prose  he  gives  unfailing  praise,  he  says: 
"What  he  did  in  his  best  writing  was  to  use  the 
English  as  if  it  were  a  spoken,  and  not  merely  an 
inkhorn  language."2  Again:  " [Language's]  being 
alive  is  all  that  gives  it  poetic  value.  We  do  not 
mean  what  is  technically  called  a  living  language, 
.  .  .  but  one  that  is  still  hot  from  the  hearts  and 

1  Poetical  Works,  ii.,  159.  a  Works,  iii.,  185. 

5 


66  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

brains  of  a  people."1  The  motto  of  poets  should 
be,  he  adds,  "The  tongue  of  the  people  in  the 
mouth  of  the  scholar."  With  this  principle  in 
mind,  he  never  fails  to  discuss  in  an  illuminating 
way  the  diction  of  poets  and  the  growth  of  his 
mother  tongue.  His  knowledge  of  words  enabled 
him  to  take  issue  with  Masson  regarding  several 
points  in  Milton's  versification  and  to  invoke  in 
support  of  his  contentions  Shakespeare,  Dekker, 
Donne,  Italian  usage,  and  Milton  himself.  His 
interest  is  not  due  to  a  desire  to  quibble,  but 
rather  to  defend  Milton  and  the  Elizabethans  and 
especially  Shakespeare  from  the  charge  of  faulty 
versification.  Chaucer  as  well  as  Shakespeare 
was  too  genuine  a  poet,  to  Lowell's  mind,  to  have 
left  his  prosody  in  a  chaotic  condition.  In  Chau 
cer 's  case  he  discusses  final  and  medial  e>  the 
restoration  of  final  n  in  the  infinitive  and  third 
person  plural  of  verbs,  and  plays  the  part  of 
editor  in  scattered  passages  in  a  way  to  convince 
one  of  his  judgment  and  his  knowledge  of  versi 
fication.  2 

With  commentators  or  editors  who  brought 
only  imperfect  qualifications  to  their  task,  he  had 
little  patience.  Carelessness  he  regards,  if  possible, 
as  even  more  inexcusable.  After  pointing  out  in 
Library  of  Old  Authors  various  errors  of  W.  C. 

1  Works,  iii.,  6. 

*  Lowell  edited  the  text  of  Donne's  poems,  published  by  the 
Rowfant  Club  in  1895. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     67 

Hazlitt,  he  adds:  "Where  there  is  blundering  to 
be  done,  one  stone  often  serves  Mr.  Hazlitt  for 
two  birds,"  an  amenity  which  is  typical  of  his 
attitude  throughout  the  paper.  And  yet  Lowell 
himself,  like  Homer,  sometimes  nods.  It  is 
pointed  out  that  he  attributes  to  Shakespeare  the 
lines  of  Richard  Barnfield: 

"  King  Pandion  he  is  dead; 
All  thy  friends  are  lapt  in  lead."1 

Devotee  of  Shakespeare  as  he  was,  such  a  slip  is 
all  the  more  surprising.2  He  speaks  of  our  being 
"the  miserable  forked  radish,  to  which  the  bitter 
scorn  of  Lear  degraded  every  child  of  Adam,"3 
whereas  even  Macaulay's  schoolboy  knows  it  is 
honest  Jack  Falstarl,  not  Lear,  who  may  claim 
the  phrase.  He  misquotes  Prior's  A  bra4  and 
Daniel,  xii.,  3. s  These  last  three  lapses  occur  in 
addresses,  which,  however,  must  have  been  revised 
before  publication.  In  essays  written  directly 
for  the  press  he  sometimes  misquotes,6  and  by  a 

IGreenslet,  p.  291. 

3  Commenting  on  the  American  slang  "to  let  slide,"  Lowell 
points  out  that  it  occurs  in  Heywood's  Edward  IV.,  etc.,  but 
says  nothing  about  its  occurrence  in  Shakespeare's  Taming  of 
the  Shrew.  Vide  Introduction  to  Biglow  Papers,  p.  188. 

3  Works,  vi.,  80.  4  Ibid.,  vi.,  72.  s  Ibid.,  vi.,  98. 

6  For  misquotations  of  Goldsmith,  Wordsworth,  and  Shake 
speare,  vide  A  Free  Lance,  p.  150  ff.  Lowell  misquotes  Burns  in 
Conversations,  p.  174,  and  assigns  a  quotation  from  Dekker  to 
Middleton  in  Early  Writings,  p.  244. 


68  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

strange  irony  he  is  guilty  of  two  slips  in  the  case 
of  final  e  in  quoting  Chaucer  and  that  after  demand 
ing  careful  consideration  for  e  as  important  in 
determining  versification.  His  fondness  for  minute 
criticism  gets  to  some  extent  its  revenge.  Slips 
in  the  vernacular  were  pet  objects  of  his  attack; 
he  corrects  Masson's  "  dislike  to  " ;  sneers  at  Hazlitt 
for  speaking  of  the  " delineation  of  a  point"; 
questions  Halliwell  about  a  relative  whose  ante 
cedent  is  vague. x 

When  the  question  concerned  literature,  Lowell 
could  be  insistent  on  minute  points  with  better 
grace  than  when  history  or  science  or  art  was  under 
discussion.  His  interest  was  vastly  more  devoted 
to  letters  than  to  kindred  subjects  and  the  result 
was  unfortunate.  One  thinks  how  effective  his 
Shakespeare  might  have  been  made,  if  Elizabethan 
England  with  its  splendid  vigor  had  been  boldly 
drawn,  that  England  when  men  flung  velvet 
cloaks  before  the  feet  of  their  Virgin  Queen ;  when 
lusty  mariners,  who  might  have  dared  the  terrors 
of  strange  seas  with  Drake  or  Frobisher,  thronged 
the  Globe  to  see  old  Shylock  rage  or  Romeo  die; 
when  the  wits  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  could 
live  their  dissolute  lives,  write  masterpieces,  and 
meet  death  in  a  brothel.  Knowing  history,  he 
might  have  pictured  the  England  of  Elizabeth  or 
of  Chaucer  or  of  the  Restoration  with  that  vivid- 

1  Sentences  occur  in  Lowell  not  uncommonly,  whose  syntax  is 
baffling  if  not  quite  indefensible. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     69 

ness  so  gripping  in  the  studies  of  Macaulay.  His 
Chaucer,  his  Shakespeare,  his  Dryden,  and  the  rest 
leave  the  poets  too  far  aloof  from  their  times;  or 
rather  to  Lowell  their  existence  in  literature  and 
in  history  are  things  apart.  One  recalls  such  an 
essay  as  Macaulay's  on  the  Dramatists  of  the  Res 
toration  and  at  once  that  society  which  Dryden 
knew,  dissolute,  voluptuous,  debonair,  flashes  on 
one's  mind  and  makes  the  literature  of  the  reign 
of  the  second  Charles  clear  in  a  way  which  shames 
Lowell's  mere  statement:  " Charles  II.  had  brought 
back  with  him  from  exile  French  manners,  French 
morals,  and  above  all  French  taste."  And  Milton's 
England !  Lowell  must  devote  over  a  third  of  his 
essay  on  Milton  to  flaying  Masson — too  easy 
prey — while  those  pregnant  days  when  King  and 
Parliament  grew  tense  for  the  death-grapple; 
and  a  great  nation  was  rent  with  Civil  War;  and 
Puritan  prayed  and  Cavalier  sang;  and  Falkland 
and  Montrose  fought  and  died  the  death;  and 
Oliver  won  Marston  Moor  and  Dunbar  and  came 
to  dominate  England  for  a  generation — those 
great  days  when  John  Milton's  blood  tingled 
through  his  veins,  seem  to  have  lain,  as  far  as 
Lowell  was  concerned,  hidden  in  the  dust  of  the 
past.  A  knowledge  of  history  would  have  given 
his  critical  essays  a  far  greater  value ;  they  would 
have  been  more  consecutive  in  tracing  literary 
movements,  more  convincing  and  clear  because 
showing  the  interactions  of  literary  with  his- 


70  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

torical  changes;  and  finally  more  vital,  because 
the  author  discussed  would  appear  as  a  part  of 
his  age  and  not  merely  as  a  superman  set  against 
a  nebulous  background. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-six,  writing  to  a  friend, 
Lowell  speaks  of  having  gone  into  many  out-of- 
the-way  books,  without  having  glanced  at  others 
which  every  one  had  read.  "For  example.  I 
have  read  books  on  magic  and  astrology  and  yet 
never  looked  into  a  History  of  England."1  It 
has  already  been  suggested  that  one  gets  from 
Lowell's  treatment  of  literary  development  the 
impression  that  his  ideas  of  history  were  vague. 
He  seems  to  believe,  for  instance,  that  the  gallicism 
of  the  Restoration  impregnated  the  English 
nation,  instead  of  making  it  clear  that  its  influence 
centred  in  the  capital,  the  court,  and  such  liter 
ary  men  as  came  within  the  sphere  of  court 
influence.2  In  speaking  of  the  low  standards  of 
morality  and  honor  which  prevailed  in  England 
in  the  age  which  was  supplanting  Milton's,  he 
says :  It  was  an  age 

when  men  could  .  .  .  swear  one  allegiance  and  keep 
on  safe  terms  with  the  other,  when  prime-ministers 
and  commanders-in-chief  could  be  intelligencers  of 
the  Pretender,  nay,  when  even  Algernon  Sidney  him 
self  could  be  a  pensioner  of  France.3 

1  Letters,  i.,  90. 

a  Works,  iv.,  Essay  on  Pope.  3  Ibid.,  iv.f  19. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     71 

While  Lowell  has  not  made  here  any  positive 
misstatement,  the  confusion  in  the  implication  is 
great.  He  has  started  out  to  speak  of  the  age 
which  was  supplanting  Milton's.  The  introduc 
tion  of  the  Pretender  shifts  the  focus  from  the 
Restoration  to  the  age  of  Anne,  and  the  reader 
recalls  with  a  shock  of  surprise  that  Sidney,  in 
troduced  on  the  heels  of  the  "intelligencers  of  the 
Pretender,"  was  dead  five  years  before  James 
Stuart  was  born.1  One  reads  with  similar  feel 
ings,  "For  Italy  Dante  is  the  thirteenth  century."2 
It  is  a  question  how  much  Italian  history  must 
have  gone  unwritten  if  Innocent  III.  and  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  had  not  impregnated  their 
generation  with  their  ideas. 

In  his  essay  on  Carlyle,  Lowell  goes  into  German 
history  in  discussing  Frederick  t^he  Great;  he  does 
not  persuade  one  of  the  accuracy  of  his  knowledge 
or  of  the  justice  of  his  opinions.  His  attitude 
toward  Frederick  may  be  gathered  from  one 
sentence  which  bears  eloquent  testimony  that  the 
critic's  view  of  history  was  that  of  the  mere  man 
of  letters : 


Frederick  had  certainly  more  of  the  temperament 
of  genius  than  Marlborough  or  Wellington;  but,  not 
to  go  beyond  modern  instances,  he  does  not  impress 

1  Sidney,  1622-1683;  James  Francis  Edward  Stuart,  the  Pre 
tender,  born  1688.  a  Works,  iv.,  237. 


72  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

us  with  the  massive  breadth  of  Napoleon,  or  attract 
us  with  the  climbing  ardor  of  Turenne.  x 

In  the  matter  of  science,  Lowell  was  even  farther 
afield.  He  writes  in  1878 :  "  Not  that  I  like  science 
any  better  than  I  ever  did.  I  hate  it  as  a  savage 
does  writing,  because  he  fears  it  will  hurt  him 
somehow."2  Eight  years  later  he  wrote  a  paper 
called  The  Progress  of  the  World,  to  introduce  a 
work  "in  which  the  advance  in  various  depart 
ments  of  intellectual  and  material  activity  was 
described  and  illustrated."  Here  if  anywhere 
one  would  expect  something  approaching  the 
scientific,  something  concrete  and  specific.  Lowell 
recognized  his  limitations  and  felt  amused  at 
having  been  asked  to  contribute  an  introduction 
to  such  a  work.  Speaking  of  the  earth  he  writes : 

Beginning  as  a  nebulous  nucleus  of  fiery  gases,  a 
luminous  thistle-down  blown  about  the  barren  wastes 
of  space,  then  slowly  shrinking,  compacting,  growing 
solid,  and  cooling  at  the  rind,  our  planet  was  forced 
into  a  system  with  others  like  it,  some  smaller,  some 

1  Works,  ii.,  114.  Vide  an  article  in  Lippincott's,  vol.  vii., 
probably  by  John  Forster  Kirke,  who  takes  issue  with  Lowell  on 
his  views  of  Frederick. 

3  Letters,  ii.,  230.  Science  to  Lowell's  mind  seems  the  foe  of 
religion:  "I  think  the  evolutionists  will  have  to  make  a  fetich 
of  their  protoplasm  before  long.  Such  a  mush  seems  to  me  a 
poor  substitute  for  the  Rock  of  Ages."  Letters,  ii.,  245.  Cf, 
Credidimus  Jovem  Regnare  and  Turner's  Old  TSmSraire,  Poetical 
Works,  iv. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     73 

vastly  greater,  than  itself,  and,  in  its  struggle  with 
overmastering  forces,  having  the  moon  wrenched 
from  it  to  be  its  night-lamp  and  the  timer  of  its  tides." 

This  is  the  expression  of  a  man  standing  poles 
apart  from  science,  from  scientific  knowledge,  and 
the  scientific  point  of  view. I 

Although,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  Lowell  knew 
his  classics  and  was  a  believer  in  their  cultural 
value,  he  was  strangely  unimpressed  by  the  beauty 
/of  Greek  art.  While  on  an  excursion  to  Greece 
in  the  spring  of  1878,  he  wrote  that  the  town  was 
"shabby"  and  "modern"  and  that  he  was  "for 
turning  about  and  going  straight  back  again." 
Though  he  pays  a  visit  to  the  Parthenon  and  to 
the  Acropolis  he  is  interested  for  the  most  part  in 
noting  that  the  Grecian  coast  is  "even  grimmer" 
than  that  of  New  England ;  that1  it  seemed  odd  for 
the  newsboys  to  cry  the  newspapers  in  Greek; 
that  the  Thessalian  insurgents  "reminded  him  of 
Macaulay's  Highlanders."  He  wrote  home  to 
Norton,  "I  prefer  Gothic  to  Grecian  architecture." 
He  had  already  confessed  in  the  Cathedral, 

The  Grecian  gluts  me  with  its  perfectness. 

His  preference  for  Gothic  over  Greek  art  was 
nothing  new  or  sudden,  for  back  in  1854  ne  wrote, 

1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Lowell  attended  lectures  in 
Dresden  on  the  natural  sciences  and  even  assisted  at  the  ana 
tomical  classes.  Vide  Scudder,  i.,  382. 


74  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

"There  is  nothing  in  ancient  art  to  match  Shake 
speare  or  a  Gothic  minster."1 

Sculpture  Lowell  scarcely  mentions.  In  his 
essay  on  Dante,  he  says  of  Florence,  "For  her  the 
Pisani  [wrought]  who  divined  .  .  .  the  Greek 
supremacy  in  sculpture."  With  what  seems  like 
half-hearted  interest  he  says,  "In  art  .  .  .  Rome 
is  wondrously  rich  especially  in  sculpture. ' '  Paint 
ing  interests  him  more, 2  though  his  taste  and  opin 
ions  are  often  surprising.  He  wonders  if  Michael 
Angelo  has  not  "cocked  his  hat  a  little  wee  bit 
too  much " ;  "Claude  is  great,  but  he  had  no  imagi 
nation";  "to  me  he  (Titian)  is  the  greatest  of  the 
painters."  His  fondness  for  Titian  leads  him  into 
amusing  superlatives;  "I  think  .  .  .  [Titian's 
Assumption]  the  most  splendid  piece  of  color  in 
the  world";  "Titian's  Tribute  Money  is  marvel- 
ously  great";  "I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would 
rather  have  it  (a  portrait  by  Titian)  than  any 
other  picture  in  the  world — yes,  rather  than  my 
favorite  Presentation  of  the  Virgin  in  Venice."3 
Seeing  Albert  Durer's  portrait  of  the  Emperor 

1  Works,  i.,  212.  In  Works,  iv.,  233,  he  says:  "  The  Greek  temple 
.  .  .  leaves  nothing  to  hope  for  in  unity  and  perfection  of  design, 
in  harmony  and  subordination  of  parts,  and  in  entireness  of 
impression.  But  in  this  aesthetic  completeness  it  ends.  It  rests 
solidly  and  complacently  on  the  earth  and  the  mind  rests  there 
with  it." 

aln  1852,  after  returning  from  Italy,  Lowell  writes,  "I  have 
studied  Art  to  some  purpose."  Letters,  i.,  195. 

J  Letters,  i.,  234. 


RANGE  OF  LOWELL'S  KNOWLEDGE     75 

Maximilian  at  three,  he  is  interested  because  the 
child  has  "an  apple  in  his  hand  instead  of  the  globe 
of  empire."  At  the  Louvre,  his  attention  is 
caught  by  a  portrait  of  Lady  Venetia  Digby  by 
Van  Dyke,  because  it  is  "the  likeness  of  a  woman 
who  had  inspired  so  noble  and  enduring  a  love  in 
so  remarkable  a  man  as  Sir  Kenelm."1  Lowell 
was  obviously  alive  to  the  plastic  arts  merely  as 
a  man  of  letters;  he  travelled,  observed,  and 
read,  but  failed  to  regard  other  arts  than  liter 
ature  from  the  point  of  view  which  belonged  to 
them. 

In  trying  to  penetrate  Turner  and  Frederick 
the  Great,  he  looked  at  them  from  the  same  point 
of  view  as  that  from  which  he  regarded  Shakespeare 
and  demanded  of  the  painter  and  the  soldier  the 
possession  of  such  imaginative  powers  as  he  dis 
covered  in  the  poet.  His  superlative  admiration 
for  Titian  with  his  wonderful  command  of  color, 
his  depreciation  of  Greek  architecture  with  its  \ 
perfection  of  form,  betray  weaknesses  in  himself. 
His  critical  essays  are  not  perfect  units  like  the  > 
Greek  temple;  and  though  they  possess  the  super 
abundant  ornament  of  the  Gothic  Cathedral  they 
lack  its  fundamental  unity  of  design.  Lowell 
executes  his  gargoyles  and  flying  buttresses,  but 
forgets  the  unified  body  to  which  these  are  merely 
ornaments  or  supports.  The  glowing  colors  of 
Titian  which  captivate  his  fancies  recall  those 

1  Letters,  i., 


76  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

purple  patches  of  his  own  which  sometimes  dazzle 
us  and  make  us  forgetful  of  defects. 

These  deficiencies  of  Lowell  were  unfortunate. 
A  knowledge  of  art  and  science  and  history  would 
have  served  to  crystallize  many  of  his  vague 
notions;  to  send  the  current  of  his  literary  knowl 
edge  into  parallel  channels  with  other  phases  of 
men's  interests  and  endeavors,  and  so  made  that 
current  deeper  and  broader  and  clearer. 


CHAPTER  III 
LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY:  ITS  BREADTH  AND 

LIMITATIONS 

LOWELL'S  chief  interest,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  centred  injthe  classics  of  language— 
in  those  works  which  the  consensus  of  opinion  had 
passed  upon  as  having  been  tried  and  not  found 
wanting.  It  almost  never  came  into  Lowell's 
mind — one  must  remember  that  he  was  a  conser 
vative — to  challenge  their  possession  of  the  prime 
qualities.  It  was  enough  for  him  that  they  had 
survived  by  possessing  elements  of  lastingness 
which  all  men  conceded  to  them.  His  keenest 
interest  concerned  the  greater  rather  than  the 
lesser  classics,  Dante  rather  than  Petrarch  or 
Boccaccio,  Shakespeare  rather  than  Pope.  It  is 
true  that  Homer  appears  in  his  works  far  less  than 
the  Greek  dramatists.  But  Homer  offered  no 
opportunity  for  direct  comparison  with  any  poet 
whom  Lowell  treated  except  Milton.  Such  a 
comparison  would  necessarily  be  limited  and 
would  make  prominent  the  virtues  of  Homer 
rather  than  those  of  Milton.  The  Greek  drama- 

77 


78  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

tists  Lowell  could  set  over  against  Shakespeare, 
emphasizing  the  differences  and  suggesting  con 
clusions  in  favor  of  the  English  poet.  The  critic's 
attitude  of  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  Greek 
literature  cannot  be  doubted,  but  nothing  in 
Greek  appealed  to  him  with  the  force  of  Shake 
speare  or  Dante  or  Chaucer  or  Cervantes  or 
Calderon.  His  interest  in  these  latter  poets  was 
nothing  short  of  enthusiastic  devotion.  Latin 
literature  he  regarded  from  the  popular  point  of 
view,  that  is,  as  largely  derivative;  "always  a 
half-hardy  exotic,"  he  calls  it.  Though  he  con 
cedes  medieval  influence  to  Ovid,  originality  to 
Horace,  a  profound  imagination  to  Lucretius, 
and  supreme  elegance  to  Virgil,  his  attitude  toward 
Latin  literature  is  summed  up  in  his  declaration 
i  that  it  maintained  an  "ordinary  level  of  tasteful 
common-sense."1 

In  the  field  of  those  literatures  which  were 
written  in  living  languages  and  those  languages 
the  media  of  expression  for  some  of  the  greatest  of 
world  poets,  Lowell's  interest  becomes  deep.  To 
him  Dante  is  "the  founder  of  modern  literature." 
The  great  Italian  appealed  to  him  powerfully  just 
as  he  did  to  Lowell's  friends,  Longfellow  and 
Norton.  The  Dante  was  written  only  after  twenty 
years  of  study.  In  seriousness,  comprehensive 
ness,  and  devotion  to  minute  detail  it  is  Lowell's 
most  important  work  in  criticism.  It  would 
1  Works,  iii.,  306. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  79 

seem  as  if  Dante  absorbed  his  intellectual  energies 
to  so  supreme  a  degree  that  he  had  little  left  to 
bestow  on  the  other  important  figures  of  Italian 
literature.  In  the  critic's  mind  Dante  probably 
made  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio,  Ariosto  and  Tasso, 
appear  dwarfed  in  comparison.  In  his  single 
excursion  into  the  field  of  French  literature,  Lowell 
concerned  himself  with  Rousseau.  He  thought 
of  the  works  of  Corneille  and  of  Racine  as  "sham- 
classic  pastures  .  .  .  where  a  colonnade  supplies 
the  dearth  of  herbage." x  To  Lessing  alone  among 
the  Germans  he  devoted  an  essay.  Whether  the 
critic's  avoidance  of  Goethe  were  deliberate  or 
not,  one  cannot  assume  to  say.  But  his  election 
of  the  secondary  author  was  not  unfortunate. 
Goethe,  unlike  Lessing,  did  not  present  to  the 
critic  a  comparatively  simple  study,  but  one  of 
many  complexities.  How  adequate  might  have 
been  Lowell's  treatment  of  Goethe  may  be  later 
apparent  when  the  question  of  his  methods  of 
handling  such  complex  problems  has  been  dis 
cussed. 

Although  to  Lowell,  Shakespeare  was  emphati 
cally  the  dominant  figure  in  English  literature^ 
he  did  not  on  that  account  exclude  the  lesser 
poets  from  studious  consideration.  English  was, 
after  all,  the  language  of  Lowell's  most  intimate 
knowledge,  a  heritage,  not  an  acquirement,  and 
in  devoting  study  to  the  great  figures  of  its  litera- 

1  Letters,  ii.,  46. 


8o  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

ture,  he  found  place  for  such  secondary  writers 
as  Pope  and  Dry  den. 

In  giving  attention  chiefly  to  English  writers, 
Lowell  concentrated  on  the  poets.  He  always 
held  the  poetic  calling  sacred.  The  poet's  ought 
to  be 

"the  song,  which,  in  its  metre  holy, 
Chimes  with  the  music  of  the  eternal  stars, 
Humbling  the  tyrant,  lifting  up  the  lowly , 

And  sending  sun  through  the  soul's  prison-bars."1 

As  his  letters  attest,  it  was  with  his  own  poetry 
rather  than  with  his  prose  that  Lowell  was  most 
concerned.  A  poet  himself,  it  was  but  natural 
that  he  should  study  the  greatest  names  of  a 
brotherhood  of  which  he  could  reckon  himself  a 
member.  His  studies  of  prose  writers  are  less 
happy  than  those  of  poets,  and  his  phrasing  of 
dicta  frequently  persuades  the  reader  that  he  is 
regarding  the  author  discussed  as  poet  rather 
than  as  prose  writer.  He  says  of  Carlyle,  to 
take  but  one  example : 

With  a  conceptive  imagination  vigorous  beyond 
any  in  his  generation,  with  a  mastery  of  language 
equalled  only  by  the  greatest  poets,  he  wants  alto 
gether  the  plastic  imagination,  the  shaping  faculty, 
which  would  have  made  him  a  poet  in  the  highest 
sense. a 

1  Poetical  Works,  i.,  34.  Cf.  Letters,  i.,  104;  Works,  iv.,  357, 
262  ff.  a  Works,  ii.,  90. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  81 

Dealing  with  Shakespeare  and  Dante  and 
Chaucer,  and  even  with  Lessing  and  Rousseau 
and  Dry  den,  Lowell  was  treating  in  every  case  a 
man  whose  position  as  a  great  fact  in  the  history 
of  his  national  literature  stood  beyond  cavil. 
With  such  men  in  mind,  Lowell  could  give  his 
definition  of  a  classic : 

A  classic  is  properly  a  book  which  maintains  itself 
by  virtue  of  that  happy  coalescence  of  matter  and 
style,  that  innate  and  exquisite  sympathy  between 
the  thought  that  gives  life  and  the  form  that  consents 
to  every  mood  of  grace  and  dignity,  which  can  be 
simple  without  being  vulgar,  elevated  without  being 
distant,  and  which  is  something  neither  ancient  nor 
modern,  always  new  and  incapable  of  growing  old.  x 

What  attitude  will  Lowell  maintain  towards 
these  classics  of  language?  To  " measure  an 
author  fairly,"  he  holds,  one  must  take  him  on  the 
strongest  side,  "for  the  higher  wisdom  of  criticism 
lies  in  the  capacity  to  admire. ' ' 2  Reading  Lowell's 
essays  on  the  classics,  one  can  doubt  neither  his 
capacity  to  admire  nor  his  possession  of  that  sym 
pathy  without  which  such  capacity  were  impossi 
ble.  Of  Dante  the  man  he  can  say,  "  Dante  is  the 
highest  spiritual  nature  that  has  expressed  itself 
in  rhythmical  form."3  Reviewing  the  Italian 
poet's  works,  he  can  study  all  with  keen  interest 
and  bestow  on  them  the  ample  praise  of  a  sym- 

1  Works,  iv.,  266.  a  Ibid.,  iii.,  140.  a  Ibid,  iv.,  263. 


82  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

pathetic  mind.  The  Canzoni  he  finds  admirable 
for  "elegance,  variety  of  rhythm,  and  fervor  of 
sentiment"1;  the  Vita  Nuova  is  incomparable  "as 
a  contribution  to  the  physiology  of  genius"2; 
the  Convito  "is  an  epitome  of  the  learning  of  that 
age,  philosophical,  theological,  and  scientific"3; 
De  Vulgari  Eloquio  is  incomplete  but  is  of  "great 
glossological  value"  and  "conveys  the  opinions 
of  Dante";  De  Monarchia  is  valuable  for  helping 
us  towards  a  "broader  view  of  him  as  a  poet," 
though  compared  with  the  political  treatises  of 
Aristotle  and  Spinoza,  it  shows  the  "limitations  of 
the  age  in  which  he  lived."4  The  Commedia 
"remains  one  of  the  three  or  four  universal  books 
that  have  ever  been  written."5 

For  the  age  as  well  as  for  Dante  and  his  works 
Lowell  seems  to  have  no  difficulty  in  getting  the 
point  of  view  of  appreciative  understanding:  "I 
am  not  ashamed  to  confess  a  singular  sympathy 
with  what  are  known  as  the  Middle  Ages.  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that  few  periods  have  left 
behind  them  such  traces  of  inventiveness  and 
power."6  Lowell  was  keenly  alive  to  the  good 
as  well  as  to  the  evil  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Dante's 
was  a  "time  of  fierce  passions  and  sudden  trage 
dies,  of  picturesque  transitions  and  contrasts." 
In  that  era  "a  whole  century  seems  like  a  mere 
wild  chaos.  Yet  during  a  couple  of  such  centuries 

1  Works,  iv.,  229.  *  Ibid.,  iv.,  148.  slbid.,  iv.,  154. 

*Ibid.,  iv.,  153  (note).         « Ibid.,  iv.,  165.         6  Ibid.,  i.,  212. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  83 

the  cathedrals  of  Florence,  Pisa,  and  Sienna  got 
built;  Cimabue,  Giotto,  Arnolfo,  the  Pisani,  Brunel- 
leschi,  and  Ghiberti  gave  the  impulse  to  modern 
art  .  .  . ;  modern  literature  took  its  rise ;  commerce 
became  a  science,  and  the  middle  class  came  into 
being. ' ' J  However  general  all  this  may  be,  it  at  least 
proves  Lowell's  sympathetic  attitude  towards  me 
dieval  times.  The  man  Dante  as  well  as  his  age 
and  his  works  meets  with  a  like  sympathy  on 
Lowell's  part:  "In  all  literary  history  there  is  no 
such  figure  as  Dante,  no  such  homogeneousness  of 
life  and  works,  such  loyalty  to  ideas,  such  sublime 
irrecognition  of  the  unessential."2 

With  a  sympathy  broad  enough  to  extend  from 
Shakespeare  to  Dante  and  his  age,  it  seems  sur 
prising  that  Lowell  should  say:  "The  whole  of 
Europe  during  the  fifteenth  century  produced  no 
book  which  has  continued  readable,  or  has  become 
in  any  sense  of  the  word,  a  classic."3  Not  only 
in  this  century  but  in  the  sixteenth  century  as 
well,  England  was  to  Lowell  a  literary  desert. 
Yet  his  sympathy  was  warm  for  those  two  great 
poets  between  whose  lofty  genius  those  two 
centuries  stretched.  Indeed  Lowell's  attitude  of 
appreciative  understanding,  so  marked  in  the 
case  of  Dante,  could  hardly  fail  when  he  came  to 
consider  the  great  figures  of  his  own  language. 
Chaucer's  is  a  "pervading  wholesomeness " ;  a 
humor  which  "pervades  his  comic  tales  like  sun- 

1  Works,  iv.,  126,  127.         2  Ibid.,  iv.,  162.         '  Ibid.,  iv.,  266. 


84  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

shine";  and  a  "gracious  worldliness."1  Spenser's 
style  is  "costly";  on  reading  him  one  passes 
"through  emotion  into  revery";  for  "to  read  him 
is  like  dreaming  awake,"  and  he  knew  "how  to 
color  his  dreams  like  life  and  make  them  move 
before  you  in  music."2  Shakespeare  was  great 
in  imagination  and  fancy,  in  perspicacity  and 
artistic  discretion;  in  judgment  and  poise  of  char 
acter  he  was  "the  greatest  of  poets." 3  Milton,  who 
like  Dante  "believed  himself  divinely  inspired,*' 
reflects  in  his  maturer  poems  "a  sublime  inde 
pendence  of  human  sympathy,"  a  phase  of 
strength  which  Lowell  could  admire  the  more 
Because  conscious  of  its  lack  in  himself.  Behind 
'  the  critic's  sympathetic  understanding  of  these 
poets  was  not  only  that  conservatism  on  his  part 
which  tended  to  make  him  take  the  classics  for 
granted,  but  a  perception  of  qualities  on  their 
part  which  appealed  to  him  strongly.  Such  were 
"gracious  worldliness";  a  style  which  wafted  one 
"through  emotion  into  revery";  powerful  imagi 
nation  not  divorced  from  "poise  of  character"; 
such  lofty  ethical  purpose  and  idealization  of  the 
poetic  calling  as  characterized  Dante  and  Milton. 
Towards  the  secondary  English  poets,  Lowell 
does  not  fail  in  appreciation.  Although  Dryden 
to  his  mind  "wanted  that  inspiration  which  comes 
of  belief  in  and  devotion  to  something  nobler  and 

1  Works,  iii.,  291  ff. 

a  Ibid.,  iv.,  334  ff.  (passim).  *  Ibid.,  iii.,  92. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  85 

more  abiding  than  the  present  moment,"  a  type 
of  inspiration  which  the  critic  found  in  Dante  and 
Spenser  and  Milton  and  which  he  could  read 
readily  into  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  still  Lowell 
concedes  him  "the  next  best  thing  to  that — a 
thorough  faith  in  himself."1  While  admitting 
the  slight  value  and  the  great  immorality  of 
Dryden's  comedies,  Lowell  suggests  palliations: 
he  was  "under  contract  to  deliver  three  plays  a 
year,"  and  the  age  was  dissolute.2  Dryden's 
prose  was  admirable  and  possessed  of  suppleness 
and  grace  and  familiar  dignity.3  The  poet  was 
"thoroughly  manly,"  a  fact  which  gives  Lowell 
warrant  for  admiring  him  aside  from  his  position 
as  a  classic.  "Amid  the  rickety  sentiment  loom 
ing  big  through  misty  phrase  which  marks  so 
much  of  modern  literature,  to  read  him  is  as 
bracing  as  a  northwest  wind."4  Lowell  would 
not  suggest  that  Dryden  had  a  place  in  the  first 
rank  of  English  poets.  "Certainly  he  was  not, 
like  Spenser,  the  poets'  poet,  but  other  men  have 
also  their  rights."5  This  last  clause  suggests 
aptly  Lowell's  gift  of  sympathy. 

In  Pope  we  find  a  frank  avowal  of  Lowell's 
early  attitude:  "There  was  a  time  when  I  could 
not  read  Pope  but  disliked  him  on  principle."6 
One  recalls  his  youthful  declaration:  "When  you 


1  Works,  iii.,  103.         a  Ibid.,  iii.,  151.  3  Ibid.,  iii.,  129. 

<  Ibid.,  iii.,  189.  s  Ibid.,  iii.,  189.  6  Ibid.,  iv.,  26. 


86  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

call  him  poet,  you  insult  the  buried  majesty  of  all 
earth's  noblest  and  choicest  spirits."1  One  has 
a  feeling  that  this  utterance,  though  expressed 
when  Lowell  was  but  twenty-five,  discloses  an 
opinion  which  he  never  entirely  abandoned.  By 
1855,  there  had  crystallized  to  a  considerable 
degree,  that  conservatism  in  Lowell  which  ex 
pressed  itself  towards  literature  as  an  acceptance 
of  great  writers  in  the  lighlTbf  general  opinion. 
The  views  he  held  in  1855  regarding  Pope  were 
essentially  those  of  his  essay  in  the  North  American 
Review  for  January,  1871.  He  would  not  have 
us  believe  him  prejudiced  against  Pope;  since  the 
early  days  of  his  dislike  he  has  read  the  poet 
"carefully  more  than  once.  ...  If  I  have  not 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  the  greatest 
of  poets,  I  believe  that  I  am  at  least  in  a  condition 
to  allow  him  every  merit  that  is  fairly  his."2  He 
condemns  the  Dunciad  and  finds  that  the  Essay 
on  Man  is  "shallow  and  contradictory."  He 
praises  the  Essay  on  Criticism,  declares  that  in  his 
Moral  Essays  and  parts  of  his  Satires,  "Pope  must 
be  allowed  to  have  established  a  style  of  his  own, 
in  which  he  is  without  a  rival,"3  and  grants  that 
the  Rape  of  the  Lock  is  the  "most  perfect  poem" 
of  its  kind  "in  the  language."4  But  it  must  be 
confessed  that  one  does  not  find  in  Lowell's  essay 

1  Conversations,  p.  5  ff.  a  Works,  iv.,  26. 

3  Ibid.,  iv.,  44.  4  Ibid.,  iv.,  56. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  87 

that  ready  sympathy  for  Pope  which  glows  for 
the  subjects  of  the  studies  which  have  just  been 
considered.  Pope  in  his  eyes  was  the  exemplar  of 
an  age  which  he  calls  "filthy"  and  "an  age  of 
sham."1 

While  there  is  no  evidence  that  Lowell  felt  a 
like  antagonism  towards  the  nineteenth  century 
and  its  writers,  his  sympathy  for  them  seems  to 
have  been  imperfect.  None  of  his  longer  or  more 
carefully  done  critical  essays  concerned  writers 
of  his  own  century  with  the  exception  of  Keats 
and  Wordsworth. 2  The  Keats  is  rather  biographic 
al  than  critical.  The  Wordsworth  concerns  a  poet 
who  had  done  his  best  work  in  the  decade  fol 
lowing  1797  and  whose  qualities  of  genius  had 
been  pointed  out  in  masterly  chapters  of  the 
Biographia  Liter  aria.  Lowell's1  other  studies  of 
nineteenth-century  writers  cannot  be  classed 
among  his  best  critical  work.  They  are  fragmen 
tary  and  inadequate.  It  would  seem  as  if  the" 
literature  of  the  century  had  no  very  genuine 
interest  for  him.  This  is  all  the  more  remarkable 
when  one  recalls  his  interest  in  poetry  and  brings 
to  mind  the  brilliant  array  of  poets  extending 
from  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  down.  In  his 
youth,  Lowell  found  that  some  parts  of  Byron 
brought  tears  to  his  eyes.  But  by  1843  he  could 

1  Works,  iv.,  48,  19. 

2  Keats  was  published  as  an  introduction  to  an  edition  of  his 
poems.     Lowell  first  wrote  on  Wordsworth  for  a  similar  purpose- 


88  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

speak  disparagingly  of  him  in  Conversations. 
Byron's  feeling  for  nature  marks  him,  says  Lowell, 
as  a  child  of  Rousseau,  who  seems  to  have  had  a 
share  in  the  English  poet's  tendency  to  sentimen- 
talism.  Byron  made  ' '  motiveless  despair ' '  fashion 
able.1  It  is  conceded  by  the  critic  that  he  was 
one  of  the  ''great  names  of  the  last  generation," 
and  that  his  "real  strength  lay  in  his  sincerity."2 
There  can  be  little  doubt  however  that  Lowell's 
last  utterance  on  Byron  was  indicative  of  his  real 
feelings:  he  confesses  in  1889  to  "an  odd  feeling 
of  surprise  that  the  framework  of  the  fireworks 
.  .  .  which  so  dazzled  my  youth  should  look  so 
bare." » 

It  was  as  early  as  1812  that  Byron  awoke  to 
find  himself  famous;  Shelley's  reputation  on  the 
other  hand  gathered  force  with  surprising  slow 
ness.  To  Lowell's  mind  Shelley  is  stilted.4  He 
is  a  "mere  poet,"  whose  genius  was  a  "St.  Elmo's 
fire  .  .  .  playing  in  ineffectual  flame  about  the 
points  of  his  thought."5  Though  he  has  caught 
some  of  the  pathos  of  the  Elizabethans  and  has  a 
fine  feminine  organization,  he  has  a  "fatal  copi 
ousness  which  is  his  vice."4  Lowell  mentions 
Shelley  in  a  letter  written  in  1877  to  deny  him  a 
share  in  restoring  to  the  ode  its  harmony  and 
shapeliness.  At  best  he  seems  to  have  felt  only 

1  Works,  iv.,  371.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  120;  i.,  100. 

s  Letters,  ii.,  386.  «  Works,  ii.,  145. 

s  Ibid.,  ii.,  229. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  89 

an  imperfect  interest  in  that  elusive  spirit  whose 
gift  made  him  one  of  the  supreme  lyrists  in  the 
language. l 

Of  Clough,  whom  he  came  to  know  intimately, 
Lowell  wrote:  "He  is  a  man  of  genius.  .  .  .  His 
Bothie  is  a  rare  and  original  poem."2  He  thinks 
Clough  "imperfect  ...  in  many  respects/'  but 
believes  that  his  poetry  "will  one  of  these  days, 
perhaps,  be  found  to  have  been  the  best  utterance 
in  verse  of  this  generation."3  To  the  mind  of  a 
day  some  forty  years  later  than  Lowell's  expres 
sion  of  opinion,  several  other  Victorian  poets  seem 
to  have  a  less  uncertain  claim  on  the  attention  of 
the  next  generation  than  Clough. 

Lowell's  early  opinion  of  Tennyson  was  highly 
complimentary.  He  wrote  a  review  of  the  Prin 
cess  in  1848  in  which  he  expressed  his  unqualified 
admiration.4  The  tone  of  the  review  may  be 
gathered  from  the  following  sentences : 

We  read  the  book  through  with  a  pleasure  which 
heightened  to  unqualified  delight,  and  ended  in 
admiration.  The  poem  is  unique  in  conception  and 
execution.  It  is  one  of  those  few  instances  in  litera 
ture  where  a  book  is  so  true  to  the  idiosyncrasy  of 
its  author  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  the  possibility 

1  Lowell  wrote  (1857)  on  Shelley  as  an  introduction  to  an  edi 
tion  of  his  poems.  The  essay  is  slight  and  biographical  with  no 
attempt  at  criticism.  2  Letters,  i.,  201  and  202. 

3  Works,  ii.,  121,  and  iii.,  243. 

4  Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review  for  March,  1848. 


90  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

of  its  being  written  by  any  other  person,  no  matter 
how  gifted.1 

In  1855  he  writes  that  Maud  is  "wonderfully 
fine."2  But  his  early  enthusiasm  seems  to  cool 
as  his  conservatism  hardens  with  the  years. 
Though  he  finds  that  Tennyson  has  caught  some 
of  the  simple  pathos  of  the  Elizabethans'  music, 
and  has  been  "the  greatest  artist  in  words  .  .  . 
since  Gray,"3  his  "dainty  trick  .  .  .  cloys  when 
caught  by  a  whole  generation  of  versifiers  as  the 
style  of  a  great  poet  never  can  be." 4  The  knights 
of  the  Idylls  are  "cloudy,  gigantic,  of  no  age  or 
country."5  The  Idylls  themselves  are  imitative, 
not  "reality  .  .  .  but  a  masquerade."6  These 
mature  dicta  are  noticeably  different  in  tone  from 
the  earlier  judgments:  it  is  not  Lowell's  enthusi 
asm  for  literature  which  has  cooled,  but  his 
sympathy  for  the  literary  output  of  his  own  day- 
As  with  Tennyson,  so  with  Browning.  In  1848 
Lowell,  while  finding  Sordello  "totally  incompre 
hensible  as  a  connected  whole,"  declared  that  the 
pieces  in  Bells  and  Pomegranates  were  "works  of 

1  "The   design  of    the   Princess,'11  he   says,    "is  novel.   The 
movement  of  the  poem  is  epic,  yet  it  is  redolent,  not  of  Homer 
and  Milton,  but  of  the  busy  nineteenth  century."     These  are 
curiously  like  his  words  on  Clough's  Bothie  (Letters,  i.,  202). 
Cf.  the  above  quoted  judgment  on  the  Princess  with  that  on 
Shakespeare  in  Works,  iii.,  36. 

2  Letters,  i.,  235.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  86. 

4  Works,  ii.,  121.  s  Ibid.,  v.,  242.     Cf.  Letters,  ii.,  85  ff. 

6 Letters,  ii.,  85.     Cf.  Works,  ii.,  132. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  91 

art  in  the  truest  sense,"  that  the  author's  dramatic 
power  was  "rare,"  and  that  he  had  "in  him  the 
elements  of  greatness."1  Lowell's  subsequent 
indifference  seems  strange  when  we  read:  "To  us 
he  appears  to  have  wider  range  and  greater  free 
dom  of  movement  than  any  other  of  the  younger 
English  poets."  Later,  in  1866,  the  critic  de 
clared  that  Browning,  "by  far  the  richest  nature 
of  his  time,  .  .  .  becomes  more  difficult,  draws 
nearer  to  the  all-for-point  fashion  of  the  concettisti, 
with  every  poem  he  writes."2  In  one  of  his 
English  addresses,  delivered  in  1883,  Lowell  re 
ferred  to  him  as  "a  great  living  poet  who  has 
in  his  own  work  illustrated  every  form  of  imagina 
tion."3  Six  years  later  in  an  American  address 
his  tone  seems  to  be  one  of  impatience.  He  quotes 
Browning  as  saying  in  the  Preface  to  his  transla 
tion  of  the  Agamemnon,  "Learning  Greek  teaches 
Greek  and  nothing  else."  The  critic  comments: 
"One  is  sometimes  tempted  to  think  that  it 
teaches  some  other  language  far  harder  than 
Greek  when  one  tries  to  read  his  translation."4 

William    Morris,  is    unmentioned    in    Lowell's 
works,  although  he  may  lay  claim  to  consideration 

1  Vide  North  American  Review,  April,  1848. 

2  Works,  ii.,  121.  3  Ibid.,  vi.,  54. 
4  Latest    Literary    Essays,    p.    145.     That    Lowell's    interest 

flagged  in  the  maturer  years  following  his  warmly  appreciative 
article  in  the  North  American  Review  gains  color  from  the  experi 
ence  of  Mr.  Moncure  Conway  who  writes  that  Lowell  (in  1858) 
"showed  no  interest  in  Browning."  Vide  Greenslet,  p.  107. 


92  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

as  a  descendant  by  no  means  unworthy  of  the 
greatest  of  English  narrative  poets.  Rossetti 
the  critic  praises  for  his  translations  from  the 
early  Italian  poets.  One  suspects  the  source  of 
Lowell's  interest  on  reading:  "Mr.  Rossetti  would 
do  a  real  and  lasting  service  to  literature  by  em 
ploying  his  singular  gift  in  putting  Dante's  minor 
poems  into  English." x  True  he  mentions  Rossetti 
in  a  letter  written  in  1858,  but  adds  that  he  has 
"not  yet  made  up  his  mind"  about  the  poet. 
With  Swinburne,  to  whose  tragedies  he  devoted  a 
paper  in  1866,  he  was  quite  out  of  sympathy. 
Chastelard  "is  at  best  but  the  school  exercise  of  a 
young  poet  learning  to  write."2  Atalanta  he 
concedes  "is  a  true  poem,"  but  it  is  "a  world  of 
shadows,"  and  betrays  "a  poverty  of  thought  and 
confusion  of  imagery."  All  things  considered, 
"it  gives  promise  of  rare  achievement  hereafter."3 
But  an  obiter  dictum  which  one  finds  in  an  article 
by  Lowell  somewhat  more  than  a  year  later,  lets 
us  into  the  secret  of  his  real  attitude.  Speaking 
of  indifferent  critics,  he  says:  "Their  .  .  .  univer 
sal  solvent  serves  equally  for  the  lead  of  Tupper 
or  the  brass  of  Swinburne."4  It  is  worth  noting 
that  after  five  years  spent  in  the  great  cosmopolis 

1  Works,  iv.,  229  (note).  2  Ibid.,  ii.,  122. 

3  Works,  ii.,  123,  126. 

«  Vide  North  American  Review  for  October,  1867,  article 
"Winthrop  Papers."  Cf.  Among  My  Books  (i.,  273)  with  Works, 
ii.,  56. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  93 

of  London,  Lowell  in  the  revised  edition  of  his 
works  omitted  that  sentence.  One  may  be  per 
mitted  to  suspect  that  tact  rather  than  sympathy 
suggested  the  omission. 

On  Matthew  Arnold  as  a  poet  there  is  little  in 
Lowell.  While  declaring  that  he  sets  ' '  a  high  value 
on  Mr.  Arnold  and  his  poetic  gift,"  he  finds  Merope 
"without  color,  without  harmonious  rhythm  of 
movement, ' '  passionless  and  dull. J  It  is  a  question 
whether  Lowell  would  have  said  that  "a  hundred 
years  hence"  Clough  would  be  thought  "to  have 
been  the  truest  expression  in  verse  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  tendencies  of  his  period,"  had 
Matthew  Arnold  instead  of  Clough  been  his  intimate 
friend. 2 

As  on  Tennyson  and  on  Browning,  so  also 
Lowell  wrote  on  Landor  and  at  about  the  same 
time.3  Again  he  wrote  on  him  many  years  later, 
after  having  met  him  personally,  in  order  to  intro 
duce  a  sheaf  of  his  letters  published  in  the  Century 
Magazine.  With  Lowell's  admiration  for  Emer 
son  in  mind,  it  is  interesting  to  note  the  intro 
ductory  sentence  of  the  later  study:  "I  was  first 
directed  to  Landor's  works  by  hearing  how  much 
store  Emerson  set  by  them."4  Lowell  came  to 
admire  Landor  for  himself,  though  not  without 

1  Works,  ii.,  134. 

2  Vide  Letters,  ii.,  17,  for  the  probable  answer  to  this  question. 
a  Massachusetts  Quarterly  Review  for  December,  1848. 

*  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  43. 


94  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

reservations.  He  says:  "I  can  think  of  no  author 
who  has  oftener  brimmed  my  eyes  with  tears  of 
admiration  and  sympathy."  And  yet  the  judg 
ment  of  the  earlier  article — and  Lowell  had  not 
forgotten  it * — is  by  no  means  reversed  in  the  later 
one:  " We  consider  Landor  as  eminently  a  poet— 
though  not  in  verse." 

The  nineteenth  century  itself  is  "a  self -exploit 
ing  one"2  and  the  poetry  of  the  modern  style  is 
"highfaluting  .  .  .  since  poets  have  got  hold  of  a 
theory  that  imagination  is  common-sense  turned 
inside  out."3  So  constantly  does  this  attitude 
crop  out  in  his  works  that  it  cannot  be  considered 
the  result  of  a  moment's  mood.  He  returns  to 
the  attack  when  he  declares : 

A  sceptic  might  say,  I  think,  with  some  justice,  that 
poetry  in  England  was  passing  now,  if  it  have  not 
already  passed,  into  one  of  those  periods  of  mere  art 
without  any  intense  convictions  to  back  it,  which  lead 
inevitably,  and  by  no  long  gradation,  to  the  mannered 
and  artificial.4 

Lowell's  appreciation,  rising  in  some  instances  to 
enthusiasm,  for  most  of  the  English  poets  of 

1  Compare,  for  example:  "We  cannot  so  properly  call  Landor 
a  great  thinker,  as  a  man  who  has  great  thoughts  "  (Mass.  Q.  R.t 
ii.,  65)  with:  "One  would  scruple  to  call  him  a  great  thinker,  yet 
surely  he  was  a  man  who  had  great  thoughts"  (Latest  Literary 
Essays,  p.  48). 

3  Works,  iii.,  94.  Cf.  Ibid.,  ii.,  158;  ii.,  212;  English  Poets, 
p.  49,  p.  66,  p.  71.  a  Works,  iii.,  270.  4  Ibid.,  ii.,  121. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  95 

whom  he  wrote,  and  his  own  poetical  claims,  make 
this  lack  of  sympathy  the  more  apparent. 

This  imperfect  sympathy  was  not  limited  to 
poetry;  fiction  and  the  drama  have  scant  interest 
for  him.  To  his  mind  the  drama  appears  to  have 
died  with  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans.  In  Dryden 
it  is  true  he  discusses  the  poet's  plays,  but  he 
ignores  Restoration  drama  as  a  whole.  He  tells 
us  that  Wycherly  corresponded  with  Pope;  that 
Congreve's  "  shamelessness  is  refreshing  in  that 
age  of  sham";  but  there  is  no  word  about  the 
Plain  Dealer  or  the  Way  of  the  World.  Lowell 
seems  not  to  have  suspected  any  connection  be 
tween  the  later  Elizabethans  and  Restoration 
comedy:  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  his  eyes  left 
no  heritage  which  found  expression  in  the  Maiden 
Queen  or  through  Congreve,  in  Sheridan.  In 
Shakespeare,  he  points  out  parallel  passages  in  the 
English  poet  and  the  Greek  dramatists,  but  there 
is  no  hint  that  Shakespearean  influence  survived 
in  Venice  Preserved  or  Jane  Shore.  So  intently 
did  he  keep  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the  Tempest  and 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream  that  the  School  for 
Scandal  and  She  Stoops  to  Conquer  seem  not  to 
have  come  within  his  line  of  vision.  When  he 
discusses  the  difference  in  motive  between  the 
ancient  and  modern  drama  it  is  notable  that  by 
modern  he  means  Shakespearean.1  His  letters, 
so  rich  in  references  to  poetic  literature,  are  all 

1  Works,  iii.,  57. 


96  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

but  silent  on  the  drama.  If  he  ever  attended  the 
theatre  when  in  Dresden  or  Paris  or  London  one 
finds  no  mention  of  it,  although  he  records  going 
"down  to  Cambridge  to  see  the  Birds  of  Aris 
tophanes."1 

When  we  consider  Lowell's  attitude  toward  the 
novel  we  find  in  his  work  surprising  silences.  In 
Rousseau  and  the  Sentimentalists  occur  references 
to  Euripides  and  Ovid  and  Petrarch;  but  of 
Richardson  (whose  Pamela  was  translated  into 
French  in  1741)  there  is  never  a  word.  And  yet: 
Richardson's 

influence  was  at  once  felt  on  the  literature  of  the 
Continent;  his  novels  as  a  whole  or  in  part  were 
translated  into  French,  Italian,  German,  and  Dutch. 
.  .  .  The  tremendous  latent  force  which  lay  hidden 
in  his  emotionalism,  when  cut  loose  from  moral  and 
religious  restraint,  was  made  manifest  in  Rousseau.2 

This  omission,  by  no  means  owing  to  a  lack  of 
knowledge  on  Lowell's  part,  seems  ascribable  in 
fairness  to  want  of  interest  in  that  literary  type 
in  which  Richardson  was  eminent.  In  his  address 
on  Fielding,  Lowell  speaks  of  Homer  and  ^Eschylus, 
of  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  but  is  silent  about 
Fielding's  work  as  a  reaction  from  Richardson. 
He  tells  us  that  Fielding's  genius  was  incapable 
of  "ecstasy  of  conception";  that  in  "grossness  his 

1  Letters,  ii.,  274.  a  Cross,  The  English  Novel,  p.  41. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  97 

plays  could  not  outdo  those  of  Dry  den" ;  but  there 
is  nothing  beyond  a  brief  generality  about  his 
influence  on  the  novel.  Lowell  had  a  personal 
acquaintance  with  Thackeray,  at  the  time  of  the 
Fielding  (1883)  twenty  years  in  his  grave,  but  it 
seems  not  to  have  entered  his  mind  to  compare 
him  with  Fielding  with  whom  he  had  so  much  in 
common.  In  an  address  on  Books  and  Libraries 
(1885)  he  "can  conceive  no  healthier  reading  for 
a  boy  or  girl  either,  than  Scott's  novels,  or  Cooper's, 
to  speak  only  of  the  dead."  One  remembers  that 
the  authors  of  Copperfield  and  of  Henry  Esmond 
had  died  several  years  before,  and  wonders  why 
Pride  and  Prejudice  and  Mansfield  Park  should 
receive  no  mention. 

Lowell  of  course  read  Dickens  .and  Thackeray. 
He  is  much  pleased  with  Vanity  Fair;  Thackeray 
"has  not  Dickens'  talents  as  a  caricaturist  but  he 
draws  with  more  truth."1 


In  Dickens,  the  lower  part  of  "the  World"  is 
brought  into  the  Police  Court,  as  it  were,  and  there, 
after  cross-examination,  discharged  or  committed  as 
the  case  may  be.  The  characters  are  real  and  low, 
but  they  are  facts.  That  is  one  way.  Thackeray's 
is  another  and  better.  One  of  his  books  is  like  a 
Dionysius  ear,  through .  which  you  hear  the  World 
talking,  entirely  unconscious  of  being  overheard.2 


1  Scudder,  i.,  297.  » Letters,  i.,  211. 

7 


98  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

He  is  pleased  to  attend  a  reading  by  Dickens  in 
1868,  but  in  1887  "is  trying  to  get  rested  by  read 
ing  Dickens"  whose  David  Copper  field  he  has 
never  read. 

Of  George  Eliot  we  look  for  mention  in  vain. 
Jane  Eyre  was  "very  pleasant"  to  him  and  he 
"liked  Wuthering  Heights.1"  Having  nothing  to 
do,  he  tries  George  Meredith,  behind  whose 
"briery  intricacies"  he  gets  occasional  glimpses 
of  a  "consummate  flower  hidden  somewhere."1 
He  reads  "Harry  James's  and  Howells's  stories," 
and  gives  us  the  key  to  his  interest  in  the  novels 
of  his  protege  Howells  by  writing  him:  "I  am  as 
weak  as  FalstafT  and  can't  help  liking  whatever 
you  do,  whatever  it  may  be." 2  Howells  published 
an  article  in  the  North  American  Review  on  Re 
cent  Italian  Comedy.  Lowell  writes  him  to 
send  in  "another  on  Modern  Italian  Literature  or 
anything  you  like,"  his  interest  being  "in  your 
genius,"  it  is  evident,  and  not  in  modern  Italian 
literature  for  its  own  sake.  In  Spain  he  is  chiefly 
interested  in  old  editions  of  Don  Quixote  and  The 
Cid. 

Lowell's  preference  for  Thackeray  over  Dick 
ens  may  have  been  due  to  the  latter's  more 
obvious  realism.  He  remarks  that  no  one  nowa- 

1  Letters,  ii.,  358. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.,  297.  Cf.  ibid.,  ii.,  17:  "When  my  heart  is  warm 
towards  anyone,  I  like  all  about  him,  and  this  is  why  I  am  so 
bad  (or  so  good)  a  critic." 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  99 

days  would  have  the  courage  to  paint  a  man  as 
Fielding  dared  to  do.1  But  it  may  be  suspected 
that  Lowell  would  not  have  read  Tom  Jones  had 
it  appeared  a  century  after  1749.  For  we  have 
Howells'  word  for  it  that  Lowell  "  would  not 
suffer  realism  in  any  but  a  friend."  He  could 
not  be  persuaded  even  to  read  the  great  Russian 
novelists.  " Ibsen,"  continues  Howells,  "with 
all  the  Norwegians,  he  put  far  from  him;  he  would 
no  more  know  them  than  the  Russians ;  the  French 
naturalists  he  abhorred."2  For  the  same  reason 
he  ignored  the  claims  of  Valdes,  of  whom  he  says : 
He  was  "  practically  impervious  to  the  germinal 
ideas  which  .  .  .  give  the  writings  of  Balzac  et 
Cie.  a  pressing  claim  upon  the  best  attention  of 
any  serious  modern  critic."3  He  thinks  Charles 
de  Bernard  "knew  the  Great  World  far  better 
than  Balzac  knew  it"  and  has  been  saved  by  a 
"gentlemanly  humor"  from  "yielding  ...  to 
melodrama  as  Balzac  so  often  did."4  Lowell's 


1  Works,  vi.,  63. 

2  Howells,   Literary   Friends  and  Acquaintance,   p.   245.     Cf. 
Works,  vi.,  85:  "Among  books  .  .  .  there  is  much  variety  of 
company,  ranging  from  the  best  to  the  worst,  from  Plato  to 
Zola."     Cf.  Works,  vi.,  60  for  an  attack  on  French  realists. 

3  Greenslet,  p.  292. 

4 Letters,  ii.,  429.  Vide  Saintsbury,  Essays  on  French  Novelists, 
p.  165:  "Charles  de  Bernard  cannot  be  called  a  great  novelist. 
.  .  .  But  for  the  actual  amusement  of  the  time  occupied  in 
reading  him,  and  in  the  character  of  time-killer,  he  may  challenge 
comparison  with  almost  any  artist  in  fiction." 


ioo  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

preference  for  the  Odyssey  over  the  Iliad,  his  fond 
ness  for  Euripides  and  Calderon,  point  towards 
his  romantic  interests,  interests  which  account  to 
some  extent  for  his  lack  of  sympathy  for  realism. 
"Fielding,"  he  says,  "has  the  merit,  whatever  it 
may  be,  of  inventing  the  realistic  novel  as  it  is 
called."1  In  poetry  he  found  that  realism  which 
belonged  to  the  "physically  intense  school," 
decidedly  intolerable.  Of  this  school  "Mrs. 
Browning's  Aurora  Leigh  is  the  worst  example, 
whose  muse  is  a  fast  young  woman  ...  of  the 
demi-monde."2  He  places  Swinburne  in  this 
school,  "the  worst  school  of  modern  poetry."3 
Realism  become  coarseness,  offended  him  in 
Swift  and  Pope.  He  confesses  to  a  hearty  dislike 
of  Dean  Swift,  regrets  that  his  "smutchy  verses 
are  not  even  yet  excluded  from  the  collections," 
and  accuses  him  of  "filthy  cynicism."4  As  for 
Pope,  "No  poet  could  write  a  Dunciad"  he  said 
in  1844,  a  declaration  which  he  repeated  twenty- 
seven  years  later. 

Pope  he  found  guilty  of  insincerity — a  weakness 
he  could  not  brook.  ' '  Without  earnest  conviction, ' ' 
he  declared,  "no  great  or  sound  literature  is  con 
ceivable."  Waller,  insincere  and  mean,  supplied 
by  his  verses  a  constant  target  for  Lowell,  who 

1  Works,  vi.,  64.     The  italics  are  mine. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.,  122.     Cf.  Letters,  i.,  365. 

3  Cf.  Letters,  i.,  377,  and  Works,  ii,,  122. 

*  Letters,!.,  76;  Conversations,  p.  7;  Works,  iii.,  153,  and  iv.,  18. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY !  •  lift- 

conceded  to  him  only  two  good  lines  in  all  his 
poetry.1  Strong  as  was  Lowell's  antipathy  to 
insincerity  it  was  even  stronger  towards  sentimen 
tality.  "I  do  abhor  sentimentality  from  the 
bottom  of  my  soul."2  Perhaps  the  consciousness 
of  a  tendency  to  this  weakness  in  himself,  kept 
in  check  however  by  a  sense  of  humor,  made  Lowell 
especially  hard  on  the  sentimentalists.  Petrarch 
he  regarded  as  "the  first  choragus  of  that  senti 
mental  dance  which  so  long  led  young  folks  away 
from  the  realities  of  life  .  .  .  and  whose  succession 
ended,  let  us  hope,  with  Chateaubriand."3  Pe 
trarch  was  an  "intellectual  voluptuary" ;  Chateau 
briand  was  "the  arch  sentimentalist  of  these  latter 
days,"  and  with  Lamartine  is  called  "the  mere 
lackey  of  fine  phrases."4  Rousseau  "the  modern 
founder  of  the  sect"  is  a  "quack  of  genius."5 
Moore,  accused  of  living  "in  sham"  and  of  "cloy 
ing  sentiment alism,"  was  the  object  of  the  critic's 
hearty  dislike.6  Percival,  whom  Lowell  crushed 
in  a  paper  which  has  been  likened  to  Macaulay's 
Montgomery,  was  a  sentimentalist,  a  fact  which  with 
Lowell  puts  his  poetical  mediocrity  beyond  all 
toleration.  In  this  same  essay  the  critic  takes 

1  Among  My  Books   (i.),  p.   51.     A  slightly  larger  claim  is 
allowed  in  Works,  iii.,  156.  *  Letters,  i.,  205. 

3  Works,  i.,  100 ;  Cf.  ibid.,  ii.f  253. 
«  Ibid.,  ii.,  253;  160;  271. 
*  Ibid.,  i.,  376;  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  165. 
6  Ibid.,  ii.,  240,  145.     Cf.  ibid.,  iv.,  391  (note). 


,  AS  A  CRITIC 

occasion  to  express  an  opinion  which  shows  a 
wholesome  view  of  genius : 

The  theory  that  the  poet  is  a  being  above  the  world 
and  apart  from  it  is  true  of  him  as  an  observer  only 
who  applies  to  the  phenomena  about  him  the  test  of  a 
finer  and  more  spiritual  sense.  That  he  is  a  creature 
divinely  set  apart  from  his  fellow  men  by  a  mental 
organization  that  makes  them  mutually  unintelligible 
to  each  other,  is  in  flat  contradiction  with  the  lives 
of  those  poets  universally  acknowledged  as  greatest. x 

His  paper  on  Thoreau  proves  him  quite  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  author  of  Walden,  under  whose 
" surly  and  stoic  garb,"  he  now  and  then  detects 
"something  of  the  sophist  and  sentimentalizer." 
Why  a  man  should  be  eager  for  the  wilderness 
except  "for  a  mood  or  a  vacation,"  he  cannot 
understand.  He  continues : 

Those  who  have  most  loudly  advertised  their  passion 
for  seclusion  and  their  intimacy  with  nature,  from 
Petrarch  down,  have  been  mostly  sentimentalists, 
unreal  men,  misanthropes  on  the  spindle  side,  solacing 
an  uneasy  suspicion  of  themselves  by  professing 
contempt  for  their  kind. 2 

It  was  the  discovery  of  what  he  considered  senti- 
mentalism  which  brought  about  a  change  in 
Lowell's  opinion  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatist 

1  Works,  ii.,  156.     Cf.  Letters,  i.,  366. 
3  Works,  i.,  376.     Cf.  ibid.,  iv.,  412. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  103 

Ford.  So  strong  was  his  aversion  to  this  weak 
ness,  that  in  two  notable  instances  his  accusation 
of  something  close  to  sentimentality  has  the  air 
of  being  introduced  as  a  final  justification  of  his 
unsympathetic  attitude.  He  attacks  Burke  for 
attacking  Rousseau  and  declares:  " Burke  was 
himself  also,  in  the  subtler  sense  of  the  word,  a 
sentimentalist/'1  As  to  Carlyle  he  speaks  of 
innate  love  of  the  picturesque  (which  is 
only  another  form  of  the  sentimentalism  he  so 
scoffs  at,  perhaps  as  feeling  it  a  weakness  in  him 
self)."2  Realizing  probably  that  this  insinuation 
was  scarcely  warranted  by  the  premise,  Lowell 
added  a  footnote  in  1888:  "Thirty  years  ago, 
when  this  was  written,  I  ventured  only  a  hint 
that  Carlyle  was  essentially  a  sentimentalist. 
In  what  has  been  published  since  his  death  I  find 
proof  of  what  I  had  divined  rather  than  definitely 
formulated."3 

Although  Lowell  employed  a  medieval  setting 
in  Sir  Launfal  and  A  Legend  of  Brittany,  and 
although  he  used  a  familiar  Greek  theme  in  En- 
dymion,  he  inveighs  against  this  search  for  subjects 
in  the  medieval  or  classical  ages.  He  says  frankly : 
"I  don't  believe  in  these  modern  antiques — no, 
not  in  Landor,  not  in  Swinburne,  not  in  any  of 

1  Works,  ii.,  233.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  92. 

3  Cf.  Letters,  ii.,  282,  and  Letters,  ii.,  320;  "[Carlyle's]  is  a  fine 
character  to  my  thinking,  especially  manly  and  helpful  to  the 
core." 


104  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

'em.  They  are  all  wrong."1  He  complains  that 
"Longfellow  is  driven  to  take  refuge  among  the 
red  men,  and  Tennyson  in  the  Cambro-Breton 
cyclus  of  Arthur." 2  He  reads  the  Idylls,  but  while 
he  sees 

very  fine  childish  things  in  Tennyson's  poem  and  fine 
manly  things,  too,  ...  I  conceive  the  theory  to  be 
wrong.  I  have  the  same  feeling  (I  am  not  wholly 
sure  of  its  justice)  that  I  have  when  I  see  these  modern- 
mediaeval  pictures.  I  am  defrauded;  I  do  not  see 
reality,  but  a  masquerade.3 

One  finds  Lowell's  theory  difficult  on  remembering 
how  much  that  was  eminent  in  nineteenth-century 
poetry,  from  Laodamia  and  Isabella  and  The  Cenci 
down,  is  drawn  from  fountain-heads  either  medi 
eval  or  classic. 

Lowell  never  pardoned  dullness  in  a  work  of 
literature;  that  was  the  irrevocable  condemnation. 
To  be  interesting,  he  maintained,  was  "the  first 
duty  of  every  artistic  production."4  He  finds 
Wordsworth  dull  at  times,  though  he  offers 
"extenuating  circumstances."  But  when  dealing 
with  early  poets  in  whom  present-day  interest  is 
not  keen,  he  could  indulge  his  impatience  of  dull 
ness  without  stint.  "We  have  Gascoigne,  Surrey, 
Wyatt,  stiff,  pedantic,  artificial,  systematic  as  a 

1  Letters,  i.,  357.  *  Works,  ii.,  132. 

*  Letters,  ii.,  85.  cf.  infra,  p.  170  and  note. 
«  Works,  ii.,  142. 


LOWELL'S  SYMPATHY  105 

country  cemetery  .  .  .  Sternhold  and  Hopkins 
are  inspired  men  in  comparison  with  them."1 
But  of  the  author  of  Confessio  Amantis,  he  has 
harder  things  to  say:  "Gower  has  positively 
raised  tediousness  to  the  precision  of  a  science  .  .  . 
You  slip  to  and  fro  on  the  frozen  levels  of  his 
verse  which  give  no  foothold  to  the  mind  .  .  . 
There  is  nothing  beyond  his  powers  to  disen 
chant."2  This  attitude  is  not  unintelligible. 
But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  understand  how  on  grounds 
of  dullness  he  could  condemn  Peele  and  Greene. 
He  thanks  Greene  "for  the  word  'brightsome' 
and  for  two  lines"  of  a  song.  " Otherwise  he  is 
naught."3  Peele,  he  says,  like  Greene,  " defied 
the  inspiring  influence  of  the  air  he  breathed  .  .  . 
But  he  had  not  that  genius  for  being  dull  all  the 
time  that  Greene  had."4  One  cannot  hesitate 
to  believe  that  against  dullness  the  stars  in  their 
courses  fight  in  vain.  Recalling,  however,  Old 
Wives'  Tale  and  especially  James  IV.,  one  hesitates 
to  accept  the  critic's  condemnation  on  the  score  of 
dullness.  A  more  plausible  reason  for  his  quarrel 
with  Greene  and  Peele  may  later  be  apparent. 

1  Works,  iv.,  274.  3  Ibid,,  iii.,  329  and  330. 

3  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  19.  « Ibid.,  p.  20. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  WITH  LOWELL 

0 WELL'S  sympathy  with  nineteenth-century 
*— '  literature,  at  least  in  some  of  its  phases, 
would  probably  have  been  less  imperfect  but  for 
qualities  in  himself  which  may  be  called  provincial 
ism  and  puritanism.  Living  in  a  cosmopolis,  he 
would  have  touched  elbows  with  men  who  were  in 
the  full  current  of  their  day  in  poetry,  in  drama, 
I  in  the  novel.  Belles-lettres  and  the  literature  of  an 
earlier  time  engaged  his  attention  too  absorbingly, 
and  that  myriad-mindedness  which  he  could  have 
found  and  to  some  degree  did  find  late  in  life  in 
London,  was  not  discoverable  in  Cambridge  or 
even  in  Boston.1  Lowell  himself  was  awake  to 
the  difference.  He  writes  to  Norton  in  1883: 

I  like  London,  and  have  learned  to  see  as  I  never 
saw  before  the  advantage  of  a  great  capital.  It 
establishes  one  set  of  weights  and  measures,  moral 
and  intellectual,  for  the  whole  country.  It  is,  I 

1  Cf.  To  0.  W.  H.  in  Poetical  Works,  iv.,  120,  where  Lowell  says 
they  have  always  found  Cambridge  good  enough  for  them. 

106 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  107 

think,  a  great  drawback  for  us  that  we  have  as  many 
as  we  have  States.1 

Lowell  has  caught  in  his  English  addresses  some 
thing  of  the  cosmopolitan  tone  whose  presence 
he  had  so  quickly  perceived.  One  cannot  but 
notice,  however,  that  the  moderation  of  tone  sits 
a  bit  awkwardly  on  his  sentences  : 

But  what  I  think  constitutes  his  (Coleridge's) 
great  power  ...  is  the  perpetual  presence  of 
imagination  ...  It  was  she  who  gave  him  that 
power  of  sympathy  which  made  his  Wallenstein 
what  I  may  call  the  most  original  translation  in 
our  language,  unless  some  of  the  late  Mr.  Fitzgerald1  s 
be  reckoned  such.2 

This  effort  to  avoid  superlatives,  to  express 
opinions  more  as  opinions  and  less  as  facts  beyond 
cavil,  is  conscious.  But  it  never  became  deep- 
rooted  and  Lowell,  home  again  in  Massachusetts 
where  he  was  free  from  the  challenging  eyes  of  a 
British  audience,  slipped  back  into  broad  super 
lative:  "It  is  no  sentimental  argument  for  this 
study  [Greek],  that  the  most  justly  balanced,  the 
most  serene,  and  the  most  fecundating  minds  since 
the  revival  of  learning  have  been  steeped  in  and 
saturated  with  Greek  literature. " 3  Again :  Sterne 

1  Letters,  ii.,  273. 

3  Works,  vi.,  72.  The  italics  are  mine.  This  address  was 
delivered  in  Westminster  Abbey,  May  7,  1885.  Vide  infra,  p. 
186.  3  Ibid.,  vi.,  166. 


io8  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

is  "the  most  subtle  humorist  since  Shakespeare, " ' 
and  Milton  "  is  the  most  eloquent  of  Englishmen." 2 

But  if  Lowell's  English  experience  did  not  leave 
him  permanently  wary  of  the  allurements  of  super 
lative,  it  doubtless  conspired,  with  the  staidness 
which  came  with  years,  to  keep  him  from  more 
obvious  sins  of  provincialism.  He  is  thereafter 
fairly  on  his  guard  against  those  bourgeoiseries 
which  jar  one  frequently  in  his  work.3  In  his 
English  addresses  he  slips  only  twice,  once  in  an 
address  not  published  till  after  his  death, 4  once 
when  speaking  at  the  Workingmen's  College, 
London. s 

Such  bourgeoiseries  are  common  enough  in 
Lowell  but  by  no  means  more  common  than 
ebullitions  of  a  humor  which  is  delightful  at  times 
but  which  often  becomes  sophomoric.  Writing 
at  the  centre,  Lowell  would  not  have  said:  "It 
almost  takes  one's  breath  away  to  think  that 
Hamlet  and  the  Novum  Organon  were  at  the  risk  of 
teething  and  measles  at  the  same  time."6  Nor 
would  he  have  let  his  provincialism  carry  him  into 
sins  against  that  taste  which  recognizes  an  instinc- 

1  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  12.  a  Ibid.,  p.  107. 

3  In  Dante  (1872)  Lowell  is  careful  to  avoid  these  lapses.  But 
in  Spenser  (1875)  he  returns  to  them  again,  though  by  no  means 
with  his  old-time  frequency. 

*  On  Richard  III.,  delivered  before  the  Edinburgh  Philosophi 
cal  Institution,  published  in  Latest  Literary  Essays. 

«  Works,  vi.,  131. 

6  Works,  iii.,  16.  Cf.  also  ibid.,  i.f  271 ;  ibid.,  iv.,  38. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  109 

tive  propriety  not  only  of  subject  but  of  treatment. 
Writing  at  the  centre,  he  would  hardly  have  said : 
"During  his  (Petrarch's)  retreat  at  Vaucluse,  in 
the  very  height  of  that  divine  sonneteering  love 
of  Laura,  of  that  sensitive  purity  which  called 
Avignon  Babylon  ...  he  was  himself  begetting 
that  kind  of  children  which  we  spell  with  a  6."1 
This  particular  weakness  of  Lowell's  led  him  astray 
more  than  once.  The  finer  propriety  which  he 
would  have  acquired  if  writing  at  the  centre 
would  have  kept  him  from  more  notable  faults 
against  taste.  He  would  not  have  devoted  twenty- 
one  out  of  fifty-nine  pages  to  an  attack  upon  the 
weak  points  of  an  editor  so  vulnerable  as  Mrt 
Masson.  He  would  have  found  a  different  text 
for  a  preachment  on  modern-day  sentimentalism 
than  the  disappointed  life  and  mediocre  verse  of 
a  man  already  eleven  years  in  his  grave.2  He 
would  not  have  so  completely  lost  his  temper  as 
he  did  in  Library  of  Old  Authors.  "The  old 
maidenly  genius  of  antiquarianism  seems  to  have 
presided  over  the  editing  of  the  Library,"  he 
exclaims.  Towards  the  chief  editor  of  the  Library, 
he  betrays  a  special  animus:  "It  might  ...  be 

1  Works,   ii.,    255.    Cf.    also   ibid.,   iii.,    284;    Latest   Literary 
Essays,  p.  9,  etc.     The  classic  case  of  Lowell's  weakness  for 
punning  and  bad  taste  occurs  in  Fireside  Travels,  p.  189,  regarding 
the  cataract  and  Milton.     It  is  omitted  from  the  final  edition  of 
Lowell's  works. 

2  Percival  died  in  1856;  his  poems  were  published  in  1859; 
Lowell's  article  appeared  in  1867  in  North  American  Review. 


i  io  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

as  easy  to  perform  the  miracle  on  the  blind  man 
as  on  Mr.  Hazlitt."1  One  recalls  the  slashing 
style  of  the  old  reviewers,  happily  extinct  with  an 
earlier  generation,  in  place  of  which  came  such  a 
method  as  that  of  Arnold  in  Lowell's  own  day, 
which  lost  none  of  its  force  by  preserving  all  of  its 
urbanity.  But  Arnold  was  not  provincial. 

Provincialism,  it  is  safe  to  say,  tended  to  strength 
en  Lowell's  puritanism,  which  was  too  deeply 
grounded  to  be  affected  by  his  years  in  Madrid  and 
London.  All  his  life  he  clung  to  two  ideas;  they 
were,  as  will  be  evident,  not  always  maintained  in 
his  criticism  and  were  at  times  even  contradicted. 
But  that  they  were  deeply  ingrained  in  his  mind 
and  were  never  really  abandoned  is  beyond  all 
question.  They  intruded  upon  his  literary  esti 
mates  in  a  confusing  way  and  placed  him  in  the 
quandary  of  being  forced  either  to  abandon  or 
essentially  to  modify  his  belief  on  the  one  hand 
or  to  shut  his  eyes  to  genuine  worth  on  the  other. 
The  first  of  these  ideas  concerns  poetry;  the  sec- 

1  It  has  been  said  in  Lowell's  defense  (Greenslet,  p.  166)  that 
his  resentment  towards  England's  pro-Southern  attitude  in  the 
Civil  War  was  partly  the  cause  of  the  "peculiar  animus"  so 
evident  in  this  essay.  "The  component  single  reviews  of  which 
this  article  is  made  up  had  appeared,"  says  Mr.  Greenslet,  "in 
the  Atlantic  and  North  American  in  war-time. "  This  is  not  quite 
accurate.  The  first  review  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  in  April, 
the  second  in  May,  the  third  in  June,  all  in  1858;  the  fifth  in 
the  North  American  for  July,  1864;  the  sixth  in  the  same  review 
for  April,  1870;  the  fourth  I  have  not  been  able  to  trace. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  in 

ond,  character.  As  early  as  the  Boston  Mis 
cellany  days,  Lowell  believed  in  the  sacredness  of 
poetry  and  of  the  poetic  calling.  In  Conversations 
he  wrote:  " Poetry  is  something  to  make  us  wiser 
and  better,  by  continually  revealing  those  types 
of  beauty  and  truth  which  God  has  set  in  all  men's 
souls."  Eleven  years  later  he  held  to  the  same 
conception  in  his  lectures  before  the  Lowell  Insti 
tute.  The  poet  has  a  mission,  to  which  he  may  be 
false,  or  of  which  he  may  be  unconscious.  "The 
sacred  duty  and  noble  office  of  the  poet  is  to  reveal 
and  justify  .  .  .  [grace  and  goodness,  the  fair,  the 
noble,  and  the  true]  to  men. " x  He  does  not  leave 
beauty  out  of  the  reckoning:  "No  verse,  the  chief 
end  of  which  is  not  the  representation  of  the  beauti 
ful,  and  whose  moral  is  not  included  in  that,  can 
be  called  poetry  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word."2 
He  reaffirms  this  notion  twenty  years  later  in 
Spenser,  though  in  Wordsworth  he  has  declared 
that  the  poet  will  win  our  maturer  gratitude  who 
makes  us  less  concerned  with  poetry  as  beauty 
than  with  poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life.3  From 
these  opinions  of  Lowell  his  conception  of  poetry  is 
manifest:  Poetry  is  the  expression  of  beauty,  but 
that  beauty  must  be  the  medium  for  such  ideas  as 
make  truth  and  nobility  dearer JxDjnen.  It  is  the 
presence  of  the  moral  element  in  the  definition 
which  leads  to  the  consideration  of  the  poet  as  a 

1  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  p.  209. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  28.  ^  Lowell's  Works,  iv.,  413. 


112  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

man.  Something  of  a  religious  character,  says 
Lowell,  clings  to  the  poet.  "It  is  something  to  be 
thought  of,  that  all  the  great  poets  have  been  good 
men." I  The  implication  is  inevitable  and  was  for 
mulated  by  Strabo  in  ancient  days  and  by  men  as 
unlike  as  Shelley  and  Newman  in  our  own  time :  no 
man  can  be  a  great  poet  who  is  not  first  a  good 
man.  Should  Lowell  cleave  to  such  a  definition  of 
poetry,  with  its  emphasis  on  the  moral  element,  and 
demand  goodness  on  the  part  of  the  poet,  he  is  cer 
tain  to  meet  with  difficulties.  Men  like  Goethe, 
Byron,  Shelley,  and  Burns  will  cause  him  more  or 
less  trouble. 2  In  the  case  of  most  of  the  poets  of 
whom  he  treated,  a  reconciliation  of  poetic  gifts 
and  character  was  not  difficult;  in  no  case  was  it 
impossible. 

Accepting  the  great  classics  without  question  as 
Lowell  the  conservative  did,  he  was  bound  to 
reconcile  his  theory  of  the  poet  with  the  poet's 
work:  if  the  work  was  noble  so  too  must  be  the 
poet.  He  does  not  disguise  his  eagerness  to  bring 
them  into  harmony.  His  attitude  towards  a 
supposed  phase  of  Chaucer's  life,  long  current  and 
by  no  means  savory,  is  typical : 

1  English  Poets,  p.  203.     Cf.  Works,  iv.,  357,  48,  297. 

2  In  the  introduction  which  he  wrote  to  Shelley's  poems  (1857) 
Lowell  says,  speaking  of  Shelley's  treatment  of  his  first  wife: 
"A  matter  of  morals,  as  between  man  and  society,  cannot  be 
reduced  to  any  individual  standard  however  exalted."     As  to 
Byron,  cf.  Lowell's   Works,  ii.,  238;  as  to  Goethe,  vide  ibid., 
ii.,  194. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  113 

Our  chief  debt  to  Sir  Harris  Nicholas  is  for  having 
disproved  the  story  that  Chaucer,  imprisoned  for 
complicity  in  the  insurrection  of  John  of  Northamp 
ton,  had  set  himself  free  by  betraying  his  accom 
plices.  That  a  poet,  one  of  whose  leading  qualities 
is  his  good  sense  and  moderation,  and  who  should 
seem  to  have  practiced  his  own  rule,  to 

"Fly  from  the  press  and  dwell  with  soothf astness ; 
Suffice  thee  thy  good  though  it  be  small, " 

should  have  been  concerned  in  any  such  political 
excesses,  was  improbable  enough;  but  that  he  should 
add  to  this  the  baseness  of  broken  faith  was  incredible. l 

When  he  comes  to  speak  of  Dante,  Lowell  con 
fronts  a  phase  of  the  poet's  life  the  truth  of  which 
has  met  wide  acceptance.  Taking  up  the  charge 
that,  following  Beatrice's  death,  Dante  gave  him 
self  up  to  sensual  gratification,  Lowell  says :  "  Let 
us  dismiss  at  once  and  forever  all  the  idle  tales  of 
Dante's  amours."2  Boccaccio,  he  declares,  "first 
set  this  nonsense  agoing"  and  made  such  an 
accusation  because  "it  gave  him  a  chance  to  turn 
a  period."3  There  are  dangers  in  arguing  back 
from  an  assumed  conclusion. 

1  Works,  iii.,  295.  *  Ibid.,  iv. ,  190. 

3  Ibid.,  iv.,  190  and  191  (notes).  "Nobody  who  never  had 
felt  the  like  himself  could  have  painted  the  sinful  love  of  Francesca 
and  Paolo  so  touchingly  ...  as  Dante  has  done  in  the  fifth 
canto  of  Hell."  Federn,  p.  221.  After  Beatrice's  death,  "we 
know  that  Dante  for  a  time  led  a  rather  dissolute  life."  Ibid., 
P.  235. 

8 


ii4  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

This  eagerness  to  bring  a  poet's  character  into 
accord  with  the  critic's  ideal  of  what  it  should  be 
sometimes  forces  Lowell  into  open  contradiction 
with  his  own  opinion.  Dry  den,  who  is  a  favorite 
of  his,  was  guilty  of  writing  indecent  comedies. 
But,  says  Lowell,  "I  do  not  believe  that  he  was 
conscious  of  any  harm  in  them  till  he  was  attacked 
by  Collier."1  A  little  later  however,  in  the  same 
essay,  the  licentiousness  of  Dryden's  comedies  is 
brought  home  to  his  recollection  by  the  fact  that 
"Limerham  was  barely  tolerated  for  three  nights." 
He  then  declares:  "Dryden's  own  apology  only 
makes  matters  worse  for  him  by  showing  that  he 
committed  his  offenses  with  his  eyes  wide  open."2 
Regarding  the  character  of  Shakespeare,  Lowell 
expresses  an  opinion  in  accord  with  his  ideal  of 
the  poet,  though  his  conception  finds  neither 
confirmation  nor  denial  in  the  facts  as  we  know 
them.  "Higher  even  than  the  genius  I  rate  the 
character  of  this  unique  man  and  the  grand 
impersonality  of  what  he  wrote."3  The  second 
clause  is  rather  vague;  Lowell  explains:  Shake 
speare  has  the  poise  and  self-command,  the  serenity 
and  loftiness  which  are  so  rare  "in  our  self -exploit 
ing  nineteenth  century. " 

Lowell's  conception  of  the  importance  of  char 
acter  in  its  connection  with  poetic  genius  ap 
proaches  nearly  to  puritanism  in  his  inclination 
to  believe  that  great  character  is  a  noble  form  of 

1  Works,  iii.,  149.  2  Ibid.,  iii.,  152.  3  Ibid.,  iii.,  94. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  115 

genius.  He  goes  even  further:  character,  he  asserts, 
is  "the  only  soil  in  which  real  mental  power  can 
root  itself  and  find  sustenance."1  Difficulties 
lie  ahead  if  Lowell  cleave  to  this  belief.  He 
recognizes  the  difficulty  himself :  it  will  not  be  sur 
prising  to  find  him  endeavoring  to  soften  down  the 
acerbity  of  Pope,  and  in  the  face  of  contradictions 
attributing  sincerity  to  the  lachrymose  feverish- 
ness  of  Rousseau,  just  in  proportion  as  he  is  eager 
to  account  for  the  position  of  the  one  and  to  justify 
the  fame  and  influence  of  the  other. 

In  his  study  of  the  great  poets,  Lowell  decided 
not  only  that  "all  the  great  poets  have  been  good 
men,"  but  that  "they  were  men  of  their  genera 
tion  who  felt  most  deeply  the  meaning  of  the 
present."2  This  last  idea,  to  which  he  himself 
as  a  poet  did  not  always  cleave,  explains  his  failure 
to  sympathize  with  much  that  is  beautiful  and 
probably  enduring  in  nineteenth-century  poetry. ; 
For,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out,  Lowell  dis 
believed  in  Greek  and  medieval  themes,  thus 
making  an  application,  provincial  in  its  narrow 
ness,  of  a  belief  to  which  one  might  well  hesitate 
to  take  exception. 

It  is  not  easy  to  say  where  in  this  general  atti 
tude  puritanism  ends  and  provincialism  begins. 
It  is  not  easy  to  say  how  far  this  attitude  would 
have  been  modified,  if  Lowell  had  all  his  life  been 
writing  at  the  centre.  Possibly  there  would  have 

1  Works,  ii.,  195.  a  English  Poets,  210. 


ii6  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

been  no  modification  at  all.  It  has  already  been 
pointed  out  that  various  lapses  against  good  taste, 
some  slight,  some  grave,  would  not  be  chargeable 
to  Lowell  had  he  always  been  a  cosmopolitan. 
Under  such  a  fortunate  condition  he  would  prob 
ably  have  felt  more  interest  in  the  novel  and  the 
drama  and  a  less  imperfect  sympathy  for  nine 
teenth-century  poetry.  But  his  dislike  of  realism  " 
in  the  novel  and  of  classic  and  medieval  elements  * 
in  modern  poetry,  while  it  might  have  been  sof 
tened  by  cosmopolitan  influences,  was  probably  too 
deeply  rooted  in  his  puritanism  to  be  wholly 
eradicated.  In  his  English  address  on  Fielding  he 
is  not  unsympathetic,  though  Fielding  is  a  realist 
and  the  inventor  of  the  realistic  novel.  Lowell's 
prejudice  in  this  instance  is  kept  out  of  sight :  after 
all  he  is  discussing  a  man  whose  "works  are  become 
a  substantial  part  of  ...  English  literature." 
And  yet  his  sense  of  moral  evaluation  will  not 
down:  a  third  of  the  address  is  given  up  to  a  con 
sideration  and  defense  of  the  morality  of  Fielding 
and  his  works.  The  significance  of  this  lies  not  so 
much  in  the  fact  that  Lowell  played  the  r61e  of 
apologist  as  that  he  considers  such  a  rdle  as  neces 
sary.  It  is  obvious  that  this  bent  of  mind  which 
has  been  called  puritanism  was  too  deeply  embed 
ded  in  Lowell's  fibre ;  it  played  a  part  even  in  those 
essays  where  we  have  not  already  marked  its 
presence. 

However  defective  Lowell's  sympathies  were  in 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  117 

certain  directions,  he  honestly  tried  to  maintain 
detachment — to  preserve  the  judicial  attitude— 
towards  the  subject  of  the  essay  and  his  works. 
As  proof  of  this  the  essay  on  Rousseau  is  worth 
examination.  In  obiter  dicta  the  critic  declares 
Rousseau  a  sentimentalist,  "the  victim  of  a  fine 
phrase, "  and — here  is  his  real  attitude  in  a  word— 
"  a  quack  of  genius. "  But  when  he  comes  to  dis 
cuss  Rousseau  formally,  he  is  determined  to  main 
tain  a  judicial  attitude.  His  lack  of  sympathy 
must  not  appear:  after  all,  the  object  of  his  con 
sideration  is  a  French  classic,  whose  influence 
in  awakening  an  appreciation  of  nature,  and  in  the 
fields  of  political  thought  and  of  education,  has 
been  great.  Lowell  first  considers  Burke,  who 
bitterly  attacked  Rousseau;  then  Johnson,  who 
"would  sooner  sign  a  sentence  for  his  (Rousseau's) 
transportation,  than  that  of  any  felon  who  has 
gone  from  the  Old  Bailey  these  many  years";  and 
finally  Tom  Moore,  who  poured  out  "several 
pages  of  octosyllabic  disgust  at  the  sensuality  of 
the  dead  man  of  genius."1  Lowell  attempts  to 
invalidate  these  attacks  by  attacking  the  men  who 
made  them.  Burke  was  vain,  a  sentimentalist, 
and  a  snob. 2  Johnson  was  a  hard-headed,  illogical 
conservative,  and  a  friend  of  "that  gay  man  about 
town,  Topham  Beauclerk"  and  of  "that  wretched- 
est  of  lewd  fellows,  Richard  Savage."3  Moore 

1  Works,  ii.,  235  ff.  passim.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  233,  236, 

«  Ibid.,  ii.,  236. 


Ii8  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

was  a  sentimentalist,  a  toady,  and  a  sham.1 
Rousseau,  continues  Lowell,  had  genius,  and  the 
attacks  upon  his  character  might  well  have  been 
omitted :  "Genius  is  not  a  question  of  character. " 2 
Indeed,  as  to  the  man  of  genius,  "  Whatever  he  was 
or  did,  somehow  or  other  God  let  him  be  worthy 
to  write  this,  and  that  is  enough  for  us."3  But 
after  all,  Lowell  cannot  quite  forget  that  Rousseau 
is  "a  quack  of  genius"  and  a  sentimentalist  who 
sent  his  children  to  the  foundling  hospital.  He 
cannot  ignore  his  character.  He  retreats:  "The 
moment  he  (the  sentimentalist)  undertakes  to 
establish  his  feeling  as  a  rule  of  conduct,  we  ask  at 
once  how  far  are  his  own  life  and  deed  in  accord 
ance  with  what  he  preaches."4  After  all,  how 
fine  a  thing  is  a  lovely  action!4  He  soon  returns 
to  Moore  and  remembering  that  he  has  branded 
him  as  a  sham  and  a  toady  for  daring  to  call  genius 
an  impostor,  declares:  "The  confusion  of  his 
(Moore's)  ideas  is  pitiable.  .  .  .  [Genius]  is  always 
truer  than  the  man  himself  is,  greater  than  he."5 
He  illustrates:  "If  Shakespeare  the  man  had  been 
as  marvellous  a  teacher  as  the  genius  that  wrote 
his  plays  .  .  .  would  his  contemporaries  have  left 
us  so  wholly  without  record  of  him  as  they  have 
done?"5  One  feels  that  Lowell's  eagerness  to  do 
justice  to  Rousseau  has  led  him  far  afield.  He 
retreats  again,  not  to  any  further  abstract  dis- 

*  Works,  ii.,  238  ff.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  241.  »  Ibid.,  ii.,  241. 

4  Ibid.,  ii.,  243.  «  Ibid.,  ii.,  244. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  119 

cussion,  but  to  a  consideration  of  Rousseau's 
character.  Though  weak  and  sometimes  despi 
cable,  he  "is  not  fairly  to  be  reckoned  among  the 
herd  of  sentimentalists."1  Moreover,  "In  judg 
ing  Rousseau  it  would  be  unfair  not  to  take  note 
of  the  malarious  atmosphere  in  which  he  grew 
up."2  In  a  consideration  of  sentimentalism  and 
of  prominent  sentimentalists  in  literature,  Lowell 
feels,  it  is  easy  to  see,  a  revulsion  from  the  unreality 
of  their  work.  He  forgets  that  "genius  is  not  a 
question  of  character" ;  now  he  says:  Except  in  the 
case  of  the  highest  creative  genius  "the  author  is 
inevitably  mixed  with  his  work,  and  we  have  a 
feeling  that  the  amount  of  his  sterling  character  is 
the  security  for  the  notes  he  issues. " 3  This  excep 
tion  marks  a  return  towards  Lowell's  real  belief  in 
the  inter-relation  of  genius  and  character.  Again  he 
comes  to  Rousseau :  he  was  the ' i  most  perfect  type  of 
the  sentimentalist  of  genius . " 4  In  fact  his  was  ' '  the 
brain  most  far  reaching  in  speculation  that  ever  kept 
itself  steady  .  .  .  amid  such  disordered  tumult  of 
the  nerves . " 4  And  yet  one  cannot  read  his  Rousseau 
juge  de  Jean  Jacques  without  believing  him  insane. s 
The  contradiction  here  Lowell  does  not  notice: 
his  point  in  one  sentence  is  to  praise  Rousseau  for 
his  mental  power  and  in  the  next  to  suggest  a  reason 

1  Works,  ii.t  244. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.,  247.      Vide  Lippincott's,  vii.,  645  ff.f  on  Lowell's 
misconception  in  this  matter. 

»  Ibid.,  ii.,  257.  4  Ibid.,  ii.,  262.  i  Ibid.,  ii.,  263. 


120  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

for  a  "charitable  .  .  .  notion  of  him."  Lowell 
continues:  Rousseau  had  a  remarkable  vein  of 
common  sense,  although  his  political  system  was 
based  on  a  fallacy.  "  For  good  or  evil, "  Rousseau 
"was  the  foster-father  of  modern  democracy."1 
As  a  man  he  "might  have  been  a  saint"  or  "have 
founded  an  order,"  although  a  little  later  Lowell 
from  his  Confessions  would  "assign  him  to  that 
class  with  whom  the  religious  sentiment  is  strong 
and  the  moral  nature  weak."2  Let  us  pity,  he 
pleads,  not  condemn.  We  ought  not  to  ask,  What 
kind  of  life  did  Rousseau  lead,  but  rather,  "Was 
this  the  life  he  meant  to  lead?"3  Lowell  knows 
the  answer  he  would  make  to  all  this.  He  made  it 
nineteen  years  later  when  he  called  Rousseau  "a 
quack  of  genius. ' '  But  now  Rousseau  is  the  subject 
of  his  essay ;  he  is  bound  to  treat  him  with  judicial 
impartiality.  He  answers : 

Perhaps,  when  we  take  into  account  his  faculty  of 
self-deception  ...  we  should  ask,  Was  this  the  life  he 
believed  he  led?4  Have  we  any  right  to  judge  this 
man  after  our  blunt  English  fashion,  and  condemn 
him,  as  we  are  wont  to  do,  on  the  finding  of  a  jury  of 
average  householders  ?  Is  French  reality  precisely  our 
reality?  Could  we  tolerate  tragedy  in  rhymed  alex 
andrines,  instead  of  blank  verse?3 

1  Works,  ii.,  264.  3  Ibid.,  ii.,  265.  '  Ibid.,u.,  268. 

*  Cf.  Introduction  to  Shelley's  Poems,  p.  21 :  "A  question  of 
morals  as  between  man  and  society  cannot  be  reduced  to  any 
individual  standard  however  exalted." 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  121 

Rousseau  was  a  typical  Frenchman,  in  many 
respects,  and  too  often  "fell  in  with  the  fashion" 
of  "  truth  padded  out  to  the  size  and  shape  de 
manded  by  comme-il-faut."  *  Rousseau  was 
"intellectually  .  .  .  true  and  fearless;  consti 
tutionally,  timid,  contradictory,  and  weak;  but 
never,  if  I  understand  him  rightly,  false."2  The 
final  conclusion  is  really  the  keynote  to  Lowell's 
true  position;  stripped  of  metaphor  it  means: 
Rousseau  belonged  to  the  sentimentalists,  but 
there  were  excellent  elements  in  him  notwith 
standing  and  less  taint  than  is  usual  with  the  class. 3 
One  cannot  but  feel  that  Lowell  has  tried  hard  to 
treat  Rousseau  with  justice  although  his  endeavors 
led  him  into  strange  vagaries.  He  attacks  Burke 
and  Johnson,  both  of  whom  he  admires;  hope 
lessly  upsets  his  deep-rooted  notion  of  genius  and 
character;  involves  himself  in  a  contradiction 
regarding  Rousseau's  sanity;  employs  false  logic; 
and  sins  against  historical  accuracy.  The  price 
was  rather  a  heavy  one  to  pay :  it  at  least  proves 
that  Lowell  was  eager  to  be  fair. 

In  his  essay  on  Pope,  Lowell  recalls  his  earlier 
dislike  of  the  poet,  and  though  his  sympathy  is 
imperfect  he  protests  that  he  is  "at  least  in  a 
condition  to  allow  him  every  merit  that  is  fairly 
his."  In  1886,  Lowell  expressed  what  a  study  of 
the  Pope  persuades  one  was  his  real  opinion: 
Pope's  "vivid  genius  almost  persuaded  wit  to 

1  Works,  ii.,  269.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  270.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  270  ff. 


122  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

renounce  its  proper  nature  and  become  poetry." 
This  was  also  his  opinion  in  Conversations.  In 
the  essay  on  Pope,  he  declares  that  the  poet  "  fills 
a  very  important  place  in  the  history  of  English 
poetry. "  The  final  point  of  the  essay  is  embodied 
in  this  question :  Was  Pope  really  a  poet  ?  Lowell's 
own  belief  is  evident.  But  he  is  talking  of  a  classic 
of  English  literature  and  feels  bound  to  do  him 
justice :  his  judicial  findings  must  not  be  radical  on 
the  one  hand,  nor  unfair  on  the  other.  He  avoids 
an  unequivocal  answer;  he  implies  that  Pope  is  not 
a  poet  since  "in  any  strict  definition  there  can  be 
only  one  kind  of  poetry."1  But  "it  should  seem 
that  the  abiding  presence  of  fancy  in  his  best 
work  forbids  his  exclusion  from  the  rank  of  poet. " 2 
This  idea  grows  on  him  until  he  assumes  the  very 
point  under  discussion  in  his  declaration:  "The 
Rape  of  the  Lock  sets  him  even  as  a  poet  far  above 
many  men  more  largely  endowed  with  poetic 
feeling  and  insight  than  he."3  All  things  con 
sidered,  one  feels  that  Lowell  has  held  in  check  his 
lack  of  sympathy  and  tried  to  maintain  a  judicial 
attitude.  As  for  Pope  as  a  man  he  says:  "In 
spite  of  the  savageness  of  his  satires,  his  natural 
disposition  seems  to  have  been  an  amiable  one  .  .  . 
There  was  very  little  real  malice  in  him";  and 
"'his  evil  was  wrought  from  want  of  thought.  '"4 
Lowell  believes  him  a  poseur  in  his  letters,  thinks 

1  Works,  iv.,  53.  a  Ibid.,  iv.,  56. 

3  Ibid.,  iv.,  57.  «  Ibid.,  iv.,  49  ff. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  123 

his  attack  on  Theobald  due  to  jealousy,  and  says 
he  made  a  "brutal  assault"  on  Denis  in  order 
to  "propitiate  a  man  whose  critical  judgment  he 
dreaded."1  But  the  critic  would  be  just  and 
finds  palliation  in  the  influence  of  the  age  and  of 
Swift. 

If  it  is  necessary  to  examine  Lowell's  attempt 
to  maintain  a  judicial  attitude  towards  men  like 
Rousseau  and  Pope,  with  both  of  whom  he  was  out 
of  sympathy,  it  is  no  less  important  to  examine 
him  from  the  same  point  of  view  in  his  essay  on 
Carlyle,  towards  whom  he  felt  "a  secret  par 
tiality."2 

If  he  tries  to  transcend  his  sympathy  and  become 
judicial  and  coldly  considerate,  he  fails  and  be 
comes  "perhaps  .  .  .  harder  on  him  than  I 
meant."2  Carlyle,  he  finds,  is  the  "first  in 
insight  of  English  critics  and  the  most  vivid  of 
English  historians."3  He  has  a  "conceptive 
imagination  vigorous  beyond  any  in  his  gener 
ation,"  a  "mastery  of  language  equalled  only  by 
the  greatest  poets."4  But  he  has  many  defects 
which  we  have  a  right  to  inquire  into  "when  he 
assumes  to  be  a  teacher  of  moral  or  political  phi 
losophy.  " 4  Carlyle  would  force  his  ideas  upon  us 
by  repeating  them  "with  increasing  emphasis  and 
heightened  shrillness,"5  until  they  have  at  last 
become  cant,6  and  he  has  grown  to  be  insincere 

1  Works,  iv.,  52.  a  Letters,  ii.,  74.  3  Works,  ii.,  86. 

4  Ibid.,  ii.,  90.  s  ibid.,  ii.,  96.  6  Ibid.t  ii.,  97. 


124  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

and  "something  very  like  a  sham  himself."1 
Caryle's  conception  of  history  moreover  is  wrong : 
it  is  not  primarily  concerned  with  heroic  or  typical 
figures. 2  The  Frederick  he  finds  is  an  exaltation  of 
a  man  far  below  the  heroic  standard. 3  It  is  a  work 
which  (and  this  is  significant)  "is  open  to  all 
manner  of  criticism,  especially  in  point  of  moral 
purpose  and  tendency."4  Lowell  approaches  the 
end  of  the  essay;  perhaps  he  has  gone  too  far  in 
his  adverse  criticism.  He  says:  "With  all  deduc 
tions,  he  remains  the  profoundest  critic  and  the 
most  dramatic  imagination  of  modern  times."4 
He  belongs  to  the  highest  order  of  minds,  for  he  is 
an  inspirer  and  awakener.5  The  next  sentence 
is  noteworthy,  for  Lowell  is  thinking  of  his  own 
obligations:  "The  debt  due  him  from  those  who 
listened  to  the  teachings  of  his  prime  for  revealing 
to  them  what  sublime  reserves  of  power  even  the 
humblest  may  find  in  manliness,  sincerity,  and  self- 
reliance,  can  be  paid  with  nothing  short  of  rever 
ential  gratitude."5  There  lies  the  secret  of 
Lowell's  partiality.  Perhaps  he  has  experienced 
a  reaction  from  the  admiration  of  the  early  days; 
his  tone  in  the  essay  is  of  one  who  has  outgrown  his 
author.  In  considering  Carry le,  it  is  to  be  remem- 

1  Works.,  ii.,  1 08. 

a  Cf.  Lowell's  utterance  in  1885  (Works,  vi.,  91):  "History  is, 
indeed,  mainly  the  biography  of  a  few  imperial  men. " 

3  Works,  ii.,  no.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  117. 

s  Ibid.,  ii.,  1 1 8. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  125 

bered,  Lowell  had  not  the  steadying  influence  of 
that  body  of  opinion  which  grows  up  through  the 
years  around  a  classic.  These  various  reasons 
may  be  considered  to  have  given  Lowell  through 
most  of  the  essay  an  unsympathetic  point  of  view. 
Beyond  doubt  his  " secret  partiality"  explains  the 
upsetting  of  his  judicial  attitude  at  the  outset. 
In  his  eagerness  to  rise  superior  to  that  partiality, 
the  critic  assumed  an  attitude  which  carried  him 
too  far  the  other  way. 

In  Thoreau  Lowell  was  treating  not  a  classic 
author  for  whom  he  felt  imperfect  sympathy  as 
in  the  case  of  Pope,  nor  one  whose  whole  class  he 
held  in  aversion  as  in  the  case  of  Rousseau,  nor 
yet  a  contemporary  like  Carlyle  for  whom  he 
had  a  secret  partiality.  In  Thoreau  rather  he  was 
discussing  an  author  who,  as  a  contemporary,  had 
not  the  claim  upon  him  which  as  a  classic  he  would 
have  exercised  and  who  had  never  seemed  to  him 
more  than  a  conscious  and  weak  imitator  of 
Emerson.  "  He  seems  to  me  to  have  been  a  man 
with  so  high  a  conceit  of  himself  that  he  accepted 
without  questioning,  and  insisted  on  our  accepting, 
his  defects  and  weaknesses  of  character  as  virtues 
and  powers  peculiar  to  himself."1  His  indolence, 
lack  of  persistency,  poverty,  selfishness — all  made 
him  regard  their  opposites  as  not  worth  possessing. * 
Thoreau,  he  held,  lacked  continuity  of  mind, 
humor,  and  logical  power.  He  was  an  egotist, 

1  Works,  i.,  369. 


126  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

something  of  a  sophist  and  sentimentalizer  and 
lacked  a  " healthy  mind."1  "His  aim  was  a 
noble  and  a  useful  one  in  the  direction  of  'plain 
living  and  high  thinking,"'  but  his  endeavors  at 
carrying  it  out  were  unsound.2  His  thought  and 
style  furthermore  were  misty  and  not  mystic.3 
Towards  the  end  of  the  essay  the  pendulum  swings 
back;  the  critic  seems  warm  for  man  and  author 
as  before  he  was  warm  against  them.  ' '  We  have, ' ' 
he  says,  "the  highest  testimony  to  the  natural 
sweetness,  sincerity,  and  nobleness  of  his  temper. " 4 
He  concedes  that  though  narrow  in  range,  Thoreau 
was  yet  a  master.  The  critic  seems  to  be  trying 
honestly,  however  tardily,  to  give  us  the  materials 
for  striking  a  balance  of  justice. 

In  treating  the  established  classics  of  language 
Lowell  points  out  those  beauties  of  their  work 
which  all  have  united  in  praising.  In  the  lesser 
classics  he  will  find  less  to  praise,  and  here  and 
there  something  to  blame.  But  the  demands  on 
his  detachment,  on  his  power  to  maintain  a  ju 
dicial  attitude,  will  be  less  than  in  the  case  of  a  man 
whose  tribe  is  his  aversion  and  much  less  than  in 
the  case  of  a  contemporary  for  whom  he  feels  such 
a  partiality  as  in  his  conservative  eyes  would  be 
quite  safe  only  in  the  case  of  a  classic. 

Shakespeare  to  Lowell  is  the  greatest  of  poets. 
He  is  "extraordinary  from  whatever  side  we  look 

1  Works,  i.,  373  ff.  a  Ibid.,  i.,  380. 

3  Ibid.,  i.,  371.  4  Ibid.,  i.,  378. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  127 

at  him. " z  Wherever  one  turns  in  Lowell's  works 
one  encounters  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  The 
critic's  attitude  toward  the  greatest  of  the  Eliza 
bethans  was  evident  as  early  as  1842  when  he 
wrote:  "Of  the  old  dramatists  .  .  .  only  Shake 
speare  united  perfectness  of  parts  with  adaptation 
and  harmony  of  the  whole."2  In  Conversations 
Shakespeare  appears  frequently,  his  practice  being 
taken  as  the  ultimate  criterion  of  perfection.  As 
the  years  passed,  Lowell's  earlier  judgment  became 
even  stronger  in  his  mind,  was  elaborated  and 
phrased  in  sweeping  superlatives.  No  matter 
what  writer  is  under  discussion,  Shakespeare  is 
brought  in  for  a  triumphant  comparison.  Carlyle 
is  great,  we  are  told,  in  the  delineation  of  character, 
but  "we  doubt  whether  he  could  have  conceived" 
a  certain  scene  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra3]  Pope's 
Rape  of  the  Lock  shows  fancy,  but  compare  it 
with  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  and  see  how  far 
it  falls  short  of  poetic  fancy4;  Chaucer  has  a  vivid 
imaginative  faculty,  but  see  how  vastly  superior 
is  that  of  Shakespeare.5  One  wonders  if  Shake 
speare  is  an  obsession  with  Lowell.  When  he  comes 
to  devote  an  essay  to  the  poet,  one  is  prepared 
for  the  attitude  he  will  assume.  If  Shakespeare 
abandons  play  writing  and  returns  to  Strat 
ford,  is  it  because  he  has  made  a  comfortable 

1  Works,  iii.,  61. 

2  Boston  Miscellany,  August,  1842,  article  "John  Ford." 

3  Works,  ii.,  103.  «  Ibid.,  iv.,  36.  *  Ibid.,  iii.,  354. 


128  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

fortune  and  can  satisfy  his  ambition  to  live  in  rural 
quiet  with  a  patent  of  gentleman?  No;  it  is 
because  he  has  fathomed  human  life  and  "come 
at  last  to  the  belief  that  genius  and  its  works  were 
as  phantasmagoric  as  the  rest,  and  that  fame  was 
as  idle  as  the  rumor  of  the  pit."1  If  parts  of  his 
text  are  obscure  does  it  suggest  inadequacy  or 
carelessness  on  the  part  of  the  poet?  No;  it 

may  be  attributed  either  to  an  idiosyncratic  use  of 
words  and  condensation  of  phrase,  to  a  depth  of 
intuition  for  a  proper  coalescence  with  which  ordinary 
language  is  inadequate,  to  a  concentration  of  passion 
in  a  focus  that  consumes  the  lighter  links  which  bind 
together  the  clauses  of  a  sentence  or  of  a  process  of 
reasoning  in  common  parlance,  or  to  a  sense  of  music 
which  mingles  music  and  meaning  without  essentially 
confounding  them. J 

This  is  the  attitude,  not  of  judicial  calm,  but  of 
special  pleading.  The  following  sentence  illus 
trates  without  need  of  further  citation  Lowell's 
assumption  of  perfection  in  Shakespeare :  "Voltaire 
complains  that  he  (Hamlet)  goes  mad  without  any 
sufficient  object  or  result.  Perfectly  true,  and 
precisely  what  was  most  natural  for  him  to  do, 
and,  accordingly,  precisely  what  Shakespeare 
meant  that  he  should  do." 2  Lowell's  findings  can 
be  anticipated :  in  imagination,  fancy,  perspicacity, 
artistic  discretion,  judgment,  poise  of  character, 

1  Works,  in.,  27.  a  Ibid.,  iii.,  86. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  129 

poetic  instinct,  humor  and  satire,  he  is  so  wonder 
ful  and  unparalleled  that  even  an  atheist  must 
believe  his  brain  the  creation  of  a  Deity. z  Lowell 
does  not  forget  that  the  great  poet  must  be  a  good 
man:  high  as  he  rates  Shakespeare's  genius  he 
rates  his  character  even  higher.  To  all  this  there 
can  be  but  one  conclusion:  here  Lowell  is  not  a 
judge ;  he  is  a  panegyrist. 

Dante,  for  whom  Lowell's  admiration  was 
second  only  to  that  for  Shakespeare,  receives 
almost  the  same  treatment.  The  critic's  attitude 
is  not  so  frankly  that  of  rapt  devotion.  Dante's 
work  had  faults:  "There  are  no  doubt  in  the 
Divina  Commedia  (regarded  merely  as  poetry) 
sandy  spaces  enough  both  of  physics  and  meta 
physics.  "2  That  is  the  single  adverse  criticism 
in  the  essay  and  Lowell  adds,  "But  with  every 
deduction  Dante  remains  the  first  of  descriptive  as 
well  as  moral  poets."2  For  the  rest,  he  is  the 
supreme  figure  in  literary  history,  whose  readers 
turn  students,  his  students  zealots,  and  what  was 
a  taste  becomes  a  religion.3  That  sentence  is 
significant :  it  is  not  the  expression  of  a  critic  who 
will  maintain  the  judicial  attitude,  but  of  one  who  is 
himself  "a  student  turned  zealot."  In  vividness, 
he  regards  Dante  as  without  a  rival;  in  straight 
forward  pathos,  the  single  and  sufficient  thrust  of 
praise,  he  has  no  competitor;  he  is  "the  highest 
spiritual  nature  that  has  expressed  itself  in  rhyth- 

1  Works,  iii.,  92  ff.         a  Ibid.,  iv.,  259.  a  Ibid.,  iv.,  163. 

9 


130  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

mical  form."1  One  does  not  necessarily  take 
issue  with  these  judgments.  But  they  are  arrived 
at  either  by  ignoring  or  brushing  aside  the  case  of 
the  advocatus  diaboli  and  it  is  obvious  from  the  out 
set  that  the  judge  has  determined  on  canonization. 
As  a  great  poet,  Dante  must  be  a  good  man.  The 
critic  will  have  no  flaw  in  him;  charges  of  sensu 
ality  are  to  be  "  dismissed  at  once. "  Does  Dante 
pity  Francesca?  It  is  not  out  of  friendship  for 
her  family  or  from  consciousness  of  fleshly  weakness 
in  himself,  but  from  the  tenderness  of  his  nature. 2 
Does  he  betray  vindictiveness?  It  is  merely 
righteous  anger  against  base  men. 3 

In  Chaucer j  as  in  Dante,  Lowell's  manner  and 
attitude  are  much  the  same.  There  is  no  investi 
gation  of  the  poet's  qualities;  he  is  frankly  a 
favorite  with  the  critic,  and  the  essay,  so  far  as  it 
deals  with  Chaucer,  declares  him,  "One  of  the 
world's  three  or  four  great  story  tellers,  .  .  .  one 
of  the  best  versifiers  that  ever  made  English  trip 
and  sing";  "one  of  the  most  purely  original  of 
poets."4  The  few  external  stains  on  the  man 
are  nothing ;  his  character  we  may  suppose  genial, 
hearty,  and  good.5 

As  Lowell  moves  away  from  this  triumvirate 
and  comes  to  consider  Spenser,  Milton,  and  the 
rest,  he  succeeds  in  detaching  himself  to  some 
extent  from  that  superlative  sympathy  which  in 

1  Works,  iv.,  263.  a  Ibid.,  iv.,  171.  *  Ibid.,  iv.,  177  ff. 

4  Ibid.,  iii.,  336  and  360.  «  Ibid,  iii.,  365. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  131 

the  earlier  cases  became  enthusiasm.  His  attitude 
toward  Spenser  is  sympathetic  enough  but  not 
lacking  in  judical  coolness.  Much  in  Spenser  he 
says  is  evanescent,  and  the  allegory  of  the  Faery 
Queen  is  tiresome.  The  praise  is  not  overdone, 
though  it  is  generous  as  befits  the  " poet's  poet." 
That  Milton  was  the  doctrinaire  who  was  "more 
rhetorician  than  thinker  "  and  who  had  a  "  haughty 
conception  of  himself, "  Lowell  admits,  though  the 
inadequate  nature  of  the  essay  lets  him  do  no 
more  than  suggest  the  poet's  greatness.  Towards 
the  other  classics  that  have  not  been  already 
discussed,  Lowell's  attitude  was  for  him  judicial. 
Towards  Wordsworth  perhaps  his  sympathy  may 
be  open  to  question,  although  in  his  essay  on 
the  poet  he  does  him  justice. J  One  might  go  on 
taking  up  in  turn  every  essay  which  Lowell  wrote. 
But  the  point  of  our  examination  can  be  made 
from  those  we  have  already  discussed. 

Towards  the  subject  of  his  essay  the  critic  is 
most  likely  to  transcend  judicial  calm.  In  Dante 
he  finds  the  Italian  poet  the  supreme  of  literary 
figures;  in  Shakespeare  he  concedes  that  place  by 
implication  to  the  English  poet.  In  the  same 
essay  he  declares  that  no  one  can  imitate  Shake 
speare  "by  even  so  much  as  the  gait  of  a  single 
verse";  in  a  subsequent  essay  he  admits  that  this 
is  not  only  possible  but  that  it  actually  occurs.2 

1  Cf.  Works,  iv.,  406;  ii.,  78;  i.,  128. 

a  Ibid.,  iii.,  36;  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  120. 


132  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Again  in  Shakespeare,  he  expresses  admiration  for 
the  poet  whose  "  poise  of  character  .  .  .  enabled 
him  to  be  the  greatest  of  poets  and  so  unnoticeable 
a  good  citizen  as  to  leave  no  incidents  for  biog 
raphies. "      Yet  in  another   essay  he  demands: 
"If  Shakespeare  the  man  had  been  as  marvellous 
a  creature  as  the  genius  that  wrote  his  plays,  .  .  . 
would  his  contemporaries  have  left ' '  him  undistin 
guished  and  unrecorded?1     In  Chaucer  he  is  eager 
to  show  from  what  mediocre  antecedents  the  poet 
sprang  with  his   "  gracious  worldliness. "     What 
are  the  Chansons  de  Geste  after  all,  he  would  ask. 
"Who  after  reading  them — even  .  .  .  the  Song  of 
Roland — can  remember  much  more  than  a  cloud  of 
battle-dust,  through  which  the  paladins  loom  dimly 
gigantic,  and  a  strong  verse  flashes  here  and  there 
like  an  angry  sword?  " 2     But  later,  when  he  is  not 
interested  in  exalting   Chaucer,   he   says:   "The 
Chanson  de  Roland  is  to  me  a  very  interesting  and 
inspiring  poem,  certainly  not  to  be  named  with 
the  Iliad  for  purely  literary  charm,  but  equipped 
with  the  same  moral  qualities  that  have  made  that 
poem  dearer  to  mankind  than  any  other. " 3    This 
tendency  to  ignore  the  demands  of  critical  detach 
ment  in  favor  of  the  author  under  discussion,  is 
the  rule  rather  than  the  exception.     In  Dry  den, 
Lowell  declares  the  poet  "highest  in  the  second 
class  of  poets,"  although  he  regards  both  Milton 

1  Works,  ii.,  244.  2  Ibid.,  iii.,  310. 

a  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  147. 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  133 

and  Spenser  as  poets  of  the  second  class  and 
Dryden's  superiors.  In  Pope,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  Lowell  refrains  from  expressing  his  opinion 
that  the  author  of  the  Rape  of  the  Lock  was  not  a 
poet,  although  that  was  his  real  belief.  Discussing 
Pope  as  a  man,  he  believes  him  guilty  of  "very 
little  real  malice"1;  in  another  essay  (that  on 
Dry  den)  he  says:  "Pope  seems  to  have  nursed  his 
grudge,  and  then,  watching  his  chance,  to  have 
squirted  vitriol  from  behind  a  corner,  rather  glad 
than  otherwise  if  it  fell  on  the  women  of  those  he 
hated  or  envied."2 

This  partiality  for  the  author  under  discussion 
probably  seemed  to  Lowell  only  a  phase  of  that 
sympathy  which  the  critic  should  feel  towards  his 
subject. 3  But  it  was  intrusive  wi£h  Lowell  and  too 
often  gave  him  the  air  of  a  special  pleader.  His  judg 
ments,  in  consequence,  are  confusing,  if,  as  often 
happens,  they  are  delivered  in  favor  of  the  sub 
ject  of  the  essay  in  the  ardor  of  to-day  and  against 
him  in  obiter  dicta  in  the  calm  of  to-morrow. 

Lowell  seems  honestly  to  have  desired  detach 
ment  in  treating  the  subjects  of  his  critical  essays. 
The  very  extravagances  into  which  he  fell  in 
Rousseau;  the  repression  of  his  own  opinion  of 
Pope  as  poet;  his  fear  of  being  affected  by  his 
partiality  for  Carry le;  even  his  apologia  of  the 

1  Works,  iv.,  49,  Essay  on  Pope.  a  Ibid.,  iii.,  177. 

3  "Without  sympathy  there  can  be  no  right  understanding," 
said  Lowell.  (Article  on  Swift,  Nation,  April  13,  1876.) 


134  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

eighteenth  century  in  Gray,  all  go  to  prove  that 
whether  he  were  treating  a  classic  or  a  contem 
porary,  either  as  man  or  as  writer,  or  whether  he 
were  sketching  a  period,  he  was  eager  to  be  fair. 

All  things  considered,  his  attitude  can  hardly  be 
called  judicial,  except  perhaps  in  the  Lowellian 
sense.  In  Lowell's  case  "  judicial  attitude"  has  a 
meaning  of  its  own.  As  one  finds  it  in  Sainte- 
Beuve,  it  means  a  cool  aloofness  which  sets  the 
facts  before  the  reader  quite  uncolored  by  the 
prejudice,  enthusiasm,  or  even  by  the  opinion  of 
the  critic.  There  is  no  marshaling  of  short 
comings  on  the  heels  of  excellences,  each  set  being 
labeled  by  the  critic.  Of  Sainte-Beuve  indeed 
one  is  almost  unconscious ;  it  is  his  business  to  see 
that  the  facts  are  placed  before  you;  you  are  the 
jury,  not  he.  Yet  it  is  he  who  admits  this  set  of 
facts  or  rules  out  that ;  he  does  not  harangue  about 
the  irrelevant,  he  excludes  it.  And  so  far  in  the 
background  does  Sainte-Beuve  remain  all  this 
time  that  one  forgets  the  power  of  his  function. 
He  knows  perfectly  well  what  the  reader's  con 
clusions  will  be  and  yet  they  have  all  the  appear 
ance  of  being  arrived  at  in  entire  independence  of 
the  critic.  But  with  Lowell,  judicial  attitude  means 
something  entirely  different.  He  is  always  in  the 
foreground,  pointing  out  that  the  author  under 
discussion  has  this  excellence  and  that  short 
coming.  Sometimes  he  gives  grounds  for  his 
judgments;  just  as  often  he  does  not.  In  either 


HIS  JUDICIAL  ATTITUDE  135 

case  the  judgment  is  given  not  with  the  dispassion 
of  a  judge,  but  with  the  finality  of  an  autocrat. 
At  times  he  descends  from  the  critical  bench  and 
argues  in  behalf  of  the  author  under  consideration 
with  all  the  warmth  of  a  special  pleader.  Such 
detachment  as  Sainte-Beuve's  we  never  find. 
Lowell's  final  conclusions  have  the  air  of  being 
reached  by  an  intuitive  process,  the  resultant  of 
which,  however  it  may  exceed  his  grounds  of 
judgment,  the  reader  is  to  accept  as  the  utterance 
of  an  ultimate  tribunal.  Lowell  does  not  mean  to 
be  unjust.  For  the  most  part  he  is  not.  But 
the  justice  of  his  final  conclusions  does  not  depend 
on  his  maintenance  of  a  judicial  attitude.  So  far 
as  the  judicial  attitude  is  apparent  in  Lowell,  it  is 
for  the  most  part  an  endeavor  to  arrive  at  justice 
by  striking  an  average  between  praise  on  the  one 
hand  and  blame  on  the  other. 


CHAPTER  V 
PENETRATION:  THE  ULTIMATE  GIFT 

LOWELL  in  his  best  studies  likes  to  call  atten 
tion  to  the  various  single  qualities  of  his 
author,  merely  mentioning  some,  expanding  on 
others,  but  in  the  end  suggesting  the  varied  round 
of  excellences  and  shortcomings.  When  one 
finishes  his  best  essays,  one  has  touched  upon  the 
works  of  the  authors  under  discussion  from  several 
points  of  view.  Whatever  careful  study  would 
disclose  to  the  eyes  of  a  man  of  cultivation  and 
taste,  Lowell  sees.  His  own  appreciation  of  the 
beauties  he  points  out  becomes  now  and  then  a 
delight  which  seems  to  revel  in  a  translation  of 
its  own  impressions  into  poetic  prose.  Now  he 
translates  his  impression  of  a  single  quality,  as 
where  he  says  of  Milton's  descriptions:  In  them 
"he  seems  to  circle  like  an  eagle  bathing  in  the  blue 
stream  of  air,  controlling  with  his  eye  broad 
sweeps  of  champaign  or  of  sea,  and  rarely  fulmin- 
ing  in  the  sudden  swoop  of  intenser  expression."1 
Now  he  translates  his  impressions  of  a  work,  as  of 

1  Works,  iv.,  99. 

136 


PENETRATION  137 

Chaucer's  best  tales  or  of  the  best  passages  in 
Wordsworth,  and  his  translations  are  always 
beautiful.  What  could  be  finer  than  this  on 
Spenser's  poetry? 

Other  poets  have  held  their  mirrors  up  to  nature,  .  .  . 
but  Spenser's  is  a  magic  glass  in  which  we  see  ... 
visionary  shapes  conjured  up  by  the  wizard's  art  from 
some  confusedly  remembered  past  or  some  impossible 
future;  it  is  like  one  of  those  still  pools  of  medieval 
legend  which  covers  some  sunken  city  of  the  antique 
world ;  a  reservoir  in  which  all  our  dreams  seem  to  have 
been  gathered.  As  we  float  upon  it,  we  see  that  it 
pictures  faithfully  enough  the  summer-clouds  that 
drift  over  it,  the  trees  that  grow  about  its  margin,  but 
in  the  midst  of  these  shadowy  echoes  of  actuality  we 
catch  faint  tones  of  bells  that  seem  blown  to  us  from 
beyond  the  horizon  of  time,  and,  looking  down  into 
the  clear  depths,  catch  glimpses  of  towers  and  far- 
shining  knights  and  peerless  dames  that  waver  and  are 
gone.  Is  it  a  world  that  ever  was,  or  shall  be,  or  can 
be,  or  but  a  delusion?1 

One  feels  that  such  a  passage  as  this,  or  as  the 
analogy  between  the  Divina  Commedia  and  a 
Gothic  cathedral,  belongs  to  poetry. 2  Such  trans 
lations  of  impression  were  not  inadvertent.  Said 
Lowell  in  1855:  "A  lecturer  on  science  has  only 
to  show  how  much  he  knows — the  lecturer  on 
poetry  can  only  be  sure  how  much  he  feels. ' ' 3  This 

1  Works,  iv.,  348.  2  Ibid.,  iv.,  236- 

3  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  p.  3. 


138  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

tendency  for  translating  feeling  into  figurative 
language  was,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out, 
one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  Lowell's  criticism 
all  his  life.  In  1842  he  speaks  of  Chapman, 
"whose  rustling  vines  and  calm  snow-capt  head, 
which  seems  made  to  slumber  in  the  peaceful  blue, 
are  on  the  sudden  deluged  with  surging  lava  from 
the  burning  heart  below."1  Even  as  a  critic, 
Lowell  the  boy  was  emphatically  father  of  Lowell 
the  man.  It  is  in  such  interpretative  criticism  as 
this  that  he  is  at  his  best.  He  seems  to  find  ab 
stract  questions  penitential  to  discuss,  but  once  he 
is  free  to  tap  the  wellsprings  of  his  feelings,  he  is 
at  ease. 

That  this  should  be  the  case  is  not  surprising. 
Lowell  had  taste  and  imagination;  both  gifts 
helped  to  make  his  impressions  true  and  his  trans 
lation  of  them  poetical  in  conception  and  phrasing. 
At  times  his  interpretations  are  not  drawn  out 
but  condensed,  and  gain  from  their  brevity  and 
suggestiveness  something  of  epigrammatic  point. 
Chapman's  eloquence,  "nobly  fine"  and  "robus 
tious,"  at  times  "seems  to  be  shouted  through  a 
speaking-trumpet  in  a  gale  of  wind."2  His  essay 
on  Pope  is  summed  up  with  a  striking  antithesis : 
"Measured  by  any  high  standard  of  imagination, 
he  will  be  found  wanting ;  tried  by  any  standard 
of  wit,  he  is  unrivaled. "  The  grace  of  inspiration 

1  Early  Writings,  p.  188.     (Boston  Miscellany,  1842.) 
3  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  90. 


PENETRATION  139 

was  with  him  when  he  wrote  of  Thoreau:  "As  we 
read  him,  it  seems  as  if  all-out-of-doors  had  kept  a 
diary  and  become  its  own  Montaigne. " x  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  in  a  volume  of  appreciation  two 
lines  more  happily  suggestive. 

This  felicity  of  phrase  is  not  uncommon  in 
Lowell  and  flashes  out  when  most  unexpected. 
He  declines  to  discuss  the  originality  of  Keats,  for 
originality  is  not  definable ;  we  all  have  intellectual 
ancestors:  "  In  the  parliament  of  the  present  every 
man  represents  a  constituency  of  the  past. ' ' 2  The 
things  of  the  spirit  survive  the  wealth  of  nations; 
who  could  have  put  the  thought  more  beautifully? 
"  The  garners  of  Sicily  are  empty  now,  but  the  bees 
from  all  climes  still  fetch  honey  from  the  tiny 
garden-plot  of  Theocritus."3  Much  of  the  same 
idea  again  is  in  Lowell's  mind,  the  deathlessness 
of  those  pages  touched  by  "the  authentic  soul 
of  man,"  when  he  said:  "Oblivion  looks  in  the 
face  of  the  Grecian  Muse  only  to  forget  her  er 
rand.  "4  It  is  small  wonder  that  the  man  who 
could  achieve  so  many  phrases,  felicitous,  illu 
mined  with  fancy,  quotable,  should  himself  escape 
criticism  by  disarming  the  advocatus  diaboli. 

Though  Lowell,  it  will  be  remembered,  some 
times  fell  short  in  the  kind  of  taste  which  ob 
serves  the  proprieties  in  the  treatment  of  persons 
and  in  the  expression  of  thought,  he  was  rarely  at 

1  Works,  i.,  381.  a  Ibid,  i.,  241. 

3  Ibid.,  vi.,  174.  4  Ibid.,  vi.,  165. 


140  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

fault  in  that  kind  of  taste  which  never  mistakes 
poor  verse  or  prose  for  good.  His  papers  on  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  published  in  the  Boston 
Miscellany  in  1842,  are  little  more  than  collections 
of  excerpts  from  the  dramatists  considered;  in  no 
case  does  the  selection  fail  to  justify  the  taste  of  the 
critic.  In  Conversations  and  again  in  Old  English 
Dramatists,  in  both  of  which  the  excerpts  are 
numerous,  the  case  is  the  same.  In  several 
instances  indeed,  the  Lowell  of  1887  showed  ap 
proval  of  his  earlier  judgment,  by  quoting  pas 
sages  which  he  had  cited  forty-five  years  before. 
Throughout  his  essays  he  quotes  passages  he 
admires,  now  from  Chaucer,  now  from  Dry  den, 
now  from  Spenser  or  Shakespeare  or  some  minor 
poet ;  all  with  scarce  an  exception  have  imaginative 
appeal  and  grace  of  diction.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  the  presence  of  these  qualities  rather  than 
of  conspicuous  moral  elements  gave  the  determin 
ing  impulse  to  his  choice. 

Imagination  indeed  with  its  various  phases  and 
distinctions  allured  him.  He  liked  to  discuss  it, 
to  point  out  that  in  its  higher  form  it  is  "the 
faculty  that  shapes,  gives  unity  of  design  and 
balanced  gravitation  of  parts";  that  it  has  a 
secondary  office  where  it  is  interpreter  of  the 
artist's  conception  into  words;  that  there  is  a  dis 
tinction  between  the  two  modes  of  performing  this 
function.  Lowell  once  or  twice  tries  to  apply  his 
distinctions,  as  where  he  concedes  to  Shakespeare 


PENETRATION  141 

the  creative  imagination  which  bodies  forth  the 
thought,  and  to  Milton  the  pictorial  imagination, 
which  merely  images  it  forth.1  But  such  subtle 
ties  seemed  to  bore  him  and  he  was  content  for  the 
most  part  to  use  the  term  in  a  general  sense. 
In  Dante's  imagination  there  is  " intense  realism" ; 
Spenser  was  "more  habitually  possessed  by  his 
imagination  than  is  usual  even  with  poets."2 
Taking  imagination  in  a  general  sense  he  some 
times  suggested  distinctions  of  kind,  as  where  he 
declares  Keats  amply  possessed  of  "penetrative 
and  sympathetic  imagination,"3  and  Carry le  of 
"conceptive  imagination  vigorous  beyond  any  in 
his  generation."4 

Lowell's  references  to  imagination  are  so  fre 
quent,  his  tone  in  conceding  it  is  so  certain,  that 
one  notes  with  surprise  his  failure  to  perceive  it. 
He  denied  creative  imagination  to  the  author  of 
Duty  and  Laodamia  and  Intimations  of  Immortality, 5 
going  so  far  as  to  say:  "Wordsworth  was  wholly 
void  of  that  shaping  imagination  which  is  the 
highest  criterion  of  a  poet."6  He  was  uncertain 
whether  the  great  gift  of  his  favorite  Calderon  were 
imagination  or  fancy.  In  his  essay  on  Chaucer 
there  is  no  mention  of  Troilus  and  Criseyde, 
although  the  imagination  which  created  Criseyde 
is  akin  to  Shakespeare's  own.  Robert  Greene, 
whose  Friar  Bacon  and  James  IV.  are  "bright- 

1  Works,  iii.,  40.  a  Ibid.,  iv.,  343.  *  Ibid.,  i.,  243. 

<  Ibid.,  ii.,  90.  s  Ibid.,  iii.,  35.  6  Ibid.,  ii.,  78. 


142  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

some"  with  imagination  and  whose  Dorothea 
neither  Chaucer  nor  Shakespeare  would  have 
scorned  to  own,  is  " naught,"1  and  "had  a  genius 
for  being  dull  at  all  times. " 2 

If  Lowell's  frequent  discussions  of  the  imagina 
tion  lead  one  to  concede  him  an  ability  to  recog 
nize  it  which  he  sometimes  disappoints,  one 
hesitates  to  accuse  him  of  defective  penetration. 
Many  things  would  seem  to  proclaim  the  falsity  of 
such  a  judgment.  "Rousseau  cries,  'I  will  bare 
my  heart  to  you!'  and,  throwing  open  his  waist 
coat,  makes  us  the  confidants  of  his  dirty  linen."3 
There  is  a  glimpse  of  Rousseau  the  poseur  which 
remains  in  the  memory.  Again:  "History,  in  the 
true  sense,  he  (Carlyle)  does  not  and  cannot  write, 
for  he  looks  on  mankind  as  a  herd  without  volition, 
and  without  moral  force."4  And  again:  "The 
radical  vice  of  his  (Thoreau's)  theory  of  life  was 
that  he  confounded  physical  with  spiritual  remote 
ness  from  men . " s  There  is  penetration  here .  Each 
statement,  one  expects,  will  be  used  as  a  basis 
on  which  far-reaching  explanations  can  be  made. 
If  Rousseau  were  a  poseur,  did  this  weakness 

1  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  19. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  20.    Lowell's  animosity  becomes  explicable  but  not 
his  denial  of  all  virtue  to  so  imaginative  a  poet  as  Greene  when 
one  reads:  "He  (Greene)  it  was  that  called  Shakespeare  'an 
upstart  crow  beautified  with  our  feathers,'  as  if  any  one  could 
have  any  use  for  feathers  from  such  birds  as  he."     Old  English 
Dramatists,  p.  19. 

»  Works,  ii.,  261.  4  Ibid.,  ii.,  118.  s  Ibid.,  i.,  373. 


PENETRATION  143 

modify  his  influence  ?  Was  it  a  fundamental  weak 
ness?  Did  it  betray  itself  in  any  essential  ways? 
How  far  is  it  reconcilable  with  the  "faith  and  .  .  . 
ardor  of  conviction"  which  the  critic  says  were  in 
him?  Lowell  does  not  state.  He  discusses  in 
stead  the  absence  of  sincerity  in  autobiographies 
in  general.  If  Carlyle  were  incapable  of  writing 
history,  why  not  point  out  his  important  lapses  in 
the  French  Revolution  and  in  Frederick?  Why  not 
make  the  weakness  of  Carlyle's  philosophy  prove 
itself  the  basic  weakness  of  Carlyle  the  historian, 
and  show  how  one  fundamental  misconception 
has  many  ramifications?  To  say  that  Carlyle's 
"  historical  compositions  are  wonderful  prose 
poems"1;  to  declare  that  his  "appreciation  is  less 
psychological  than  physical  and  external,"2  is 
to  remain  on  the  surface  of  things  and  to  toy  with 
the  incidental.  Such  points  have  their  place ;  but 
their  place  is  subsidiary.  If  the  radical  vice  of 
Thoreau's  theory  of  life  were  his  confounding  of 
physical  with  spiritual  remoteness  from  men,  why 
is  this  vice  not  considered  as  radical  and  made  to 
explain  his  idiosyncrasies?  Why  should  Thoreau 
make  such  a  mistake  and  how  came  he  to  persist 
in  it?  Has  it  any  bearing  on  his  work?  What 
connection  has  it  with  his  egotism,  with  his  senti- 
mentalism?  To  accuse  Thoreau  of  morbid  self- 
consciousness,  of  unhealthiness  of  mind,  of  lack 

1  Works,  ii.,  102.  <•  Ibid.,  ii.,  103. 


144  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

of  humor,  is  to  hide  the  flash  of  penetration  in  a 
mass  of  cloud. 

This  weakness  of  Lowell  points  the  way  to 
others.  It  has  been  said  that  he  seldom  failed 
to  notice  the  various  qualities  of  an  author.  Some 
he  discusses  or  illustrates;  others  he  merely  men 
tions.  Their  inter-relation  seems  to  elude  him. 
In  Dry  den  he  speaks  of  the  poet's  faith  in  himself, 
tendency  to  exaggeration,  inequality,  strength  of 
understanding,  and  so  on.  He  points  out  quali 
ties  as  if  they  had  as  little  vital  connection  with  one 
another  or  with  the  poet  to  whom  they  belonged  as 
his  coat  or  hat  or  gloves.  Lowell  himself  seems 
conscious  that  an  array  of  qualities  which  might  be 
found  in  many  poets  tells  nothing  in  particular 
about  Dry  den.  At  the  end  of  the  essay  he  seeks 
to  emphasize  the  poet's  salient  qualities.  This 
passage  and  the  method  are  typical: 

Was  he,  then,  a  great  poet?  Hardly,  in  the  narrowest 
definition.  But  he  was  a  strong  thinker  who  some 
times  carried  common  sense  to  a  height  where  it 
catches  the  light  of  a  diviner  air,  and  warmed  reason 
till  it  had  well-nigh  the  illuminating  property  of 
intuition  .  .  .  He  sees,  among  other  things,  that  a 
man  who  undertakes  to  write  should  first  have  a 
meaning  perfectly  defined  to  himself,  and  then  should 
be  able  to  set  it  forth  clearly  in  the  best  words.  This 
is  precisely  Dryden's  praise,  and  ...  to  read  him  is 
as  bracing  as  a  northwest  wind  ...  In  mind  and 
manner  his  foremost  quality  is  energy.  In  ripeness  of 


PENETRATION  145 

mind  and  bluff  heartiness  of  expression,  he  takes  rank 
with  the  best.  His  phrase  is  always  a  shortcut  to  his 
sense  ...  He  had  .  .  .  the  gift  of  the  right  word. 
And  if  he  does  not,  like  one  or  two  of  the  greater 
masters  of  song,  stir  our  sympathies  by  that  inde 
finable  aroma  so  magical  in  arousing  the  subtile 
associations  of  the  soul,  he  has  this  in  common  with 
the  few  great  writers,  that  the  winged  seeds  of  his 
thought  embed  themselves  in  the  memory  and  germi 
nate  there.1 

There  can  be  little  question  about  the  soundness  of 
all  this.  But  why  stop  here?  Are  these  qualities 
peculiar  to  Dry  den?  What  one  or  two  of  them  or 
what  combination  of  them  explains  him?  Is  the 
poet  thus  designated  John  Dryden  and  no  one 
else?  Are  these  qualities  a  sufficient  explanation 
of  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  the  Hind  and  Panther,  Absalom 
and  Achitophel,  and  the  lyrics  in  the  dramas? 
Do  we  know  this  Dryden,  his  mind  or  his  genius? 
Do  we  know  what  was  fundamental  in  them,  from 
which  other  characteristics  had  their  rise?  Have 
we  got  at  the  very  pulse  of  the  machine  or  have  we 
merely  been  directed  to  a  mass  of  cog-wheels  and 
pulleys,  all  unassembled,  with  the  remark  that  this 
one  is  large  and  that  one  small,  but  never  a  word 
about  the  interplay  of  parts  or  the  function  of  each 
in  the  total  mechanism?  Lowell  realizes  this 
weakness;  he  will  point  out  the  radical  element 
in  Dry  den's  greatness:  "What  gave  and  secures 

'  Works,  iii.,  188  ff. 


146  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

for  him  this  singular  eminence?  To  put  it  in  a 
single  word,  I  think  that  his  qualities  and  faculties 
were  in  that  rare  combination  which  makes  char 
acter.  This  gave  flavor  to  whatever  he  wrote, — a 
very  rare  quality."1  One  cannot  but  ask:  Is 
that  the  answer? 

What  is  the  ultimate  quality  of  Keats  ?  l '  Enough 
that  we  recognize  in  Keats  that  indefinable  new 
ness  and  unexpectedness  which  we  call  genius."2 
Is  this  the  answer?  If  so,  how  shall  we  explain 
Euclid  and  Napoleon  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  great  names  of  literature? 
What  is  the  secret  of  Dante's  power?  "The  secret 
of  Dante's  power  is  not  far  to  seek.  Whoever  can 
express  himself  with  the  full  force  of  unconscious 
sincerity  will  be  found  to  have  uttered  something 
ideal  and  universal."3  Is  that  the  answer? 
And  Chaucer — what  of  him?  "In  short,  Chaucer 
had  that  fine  literary  sense  which  is  as  rare  as 
genius,  and,  united  with  it,  as  it  was  in  him, 
assures  an  immortality  of  fame."4  Is  that  the 
answer?  Was  fine  literary  sense,  united  to  genius, 
peculiar  to  Chaucer?  United  as  they  were  in  him  ? 
That  is  just  the  question;  and  it  goes  unanswered. 

In  his  essay  on  Wordsworth,5  Richard  Holt 
Hutton  lays  down  what  he  considers  the  ultimate 
characteristic  of  Wordsworth  the  poet : 

1  Works,  iii.,  188.  2  Ibid.,  i.,  242.  3  Ibid.,  iv.,  258. 

*  Ibid.,  iii. f  331.  *  Essays  in  Literary  Criticism. 


PENETRATION  147 

He  could  detach  his  mind  from  the  commonplace 
series  of  impressions  which  are  generated  by  common 
place  objects  or  events,  resist  and  often  reverse  the 
current  of  emotion  to  which  ordinary  minds  are  lia 
ble,  and  triumphantly  justify  the  strain  of  rapture 
with  which  he  celebrated  what  excites  either  no  feel 
ing,  or  weary  feeling,  or  painful  feeling,  in  the  mass  of 
unreflecting  men. 

The  essay  which  follows  is  an  exposition  of  that 
sentence.  No  phase  of  the  poet's  mind  or  art  is 
isolated;  the  inter-relations  are  made  clear,  and 
constantly  the  critic  returns  to  emphasize  again 
the  ultimate  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  genius. 
When  Hutton  says:  "Wordsworth  .  .  .  was  al 
most  a  miser  in  his  reluctance  to  trench  upon  the 
spiritual  capital  at  his  disposal,"  we  recognize 
the  critic's  penetration  in  the  remark.  But  he  does 
not  stop  there ;  he  expands  and  explains  and  shows 
the  relation  between  this  "spiritual  frugality" 
and  that  characteristic  of  the  poet  which  he  had 
already  laid  down  as  fundamental.  When  he 
puts  his  finger  on  the  vital  spot  of  Wordsworth's 
faculty,  he  evokes  our  assent,  not  a  shock  of  sur 
prise  at  a  deduction  whose  premises  have  been  but 
vaguely  suggested. 

His  (Wordsworth's)  poetic  faculty  lies,  I  think,  in 
contemplatively  seizing  the  characteristic  individual 
influences  which  all  living  things,  from  the  very 
smallest  of  earth  or  air  up  to  man  and  the  Spirit  of 


148  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

God,  radiate  around  them  to  every  mind  that  will 
surrender  itself  to  their  expressive  power. 

Here  is  penetration;  coming  as  it  does,  it  is  not 
like  a  flash  of  lightning  in  the  dark,  but  like  the 
sunlight,  steady,  luminous,  making  bright  far  cor 
ners  and  dim  recesses. 

When  Matthew  Arnold  writes  on  Wordsworth, x 
he  insists  upon  the  acceptance  of  his  own  under 
standing  of  poetic  greatness:  "The  noble  and 
profound  application  of  ideas  to  life  is  the  most 
essential  part  of  poetic  greatness."  He  continues: 

A  great  poet  receives  his  distinctive  character  of 
superiority  from  his  application,  under  the  conditions 
immutably  fixed  by  the  laws  of  poetic  beauty  and 
poetic  truth,  ...  of  the  ideas 

"  On  man,  on  nature,  and  on  human  life," 
which  he  has  acquired  for  himself. 

The  essay  is  an  endeavor  to  show  that  Wordsworth's 
superiority  as  a  poet  arises  from  "his  powerful 
application  to  his  subject"  of  such  ideas.  There 
is  no  deviation  from  the  question;  the  critic  is 
insistent  on  his  primary  definition;  he  constantly 
recurs  to  it,  each  time  letting  his  exposition  become 
a  little  more  comprehensive  and  yet  keeping  it 
specific.  His  final  explanation  of  the  poet  is 
consequent  from  his  premises ;  it  is  penetrating,  as 
Hutton's  is  penetrating,  and  for  a  similar  reason : 

1  Essays  in  Criticism  (26.  series). 


PENETRATION  149 

Wordsworth's  poetry  is  great  because  of  the  extra 
ordinary  power  with  which  Wordsworth  feels  the  joy 
offered  to  us  in  nature,  the  joy  offered  to  us  in  the 
simple  primary  affections  and  beauties ;  and  because  of 
the  extraordinary  power  with  which  in  case  after  case, 
he  shows  us  this  joy,  and  renders  it  so  as  to  make 
us  share  it. 

One  may  not  accept  the  conclusions  of  Arnold 
and  Hutton ;  one  may  quarrel  with  Arnold's  defini 
tion  of  poetry.  But  one  cannot  fail  to  perceive 
that  their  penetration  is  an  essentially  different 
thing  from  Lowell's. 

Such  conclusions  as  these  of  Hutton  and  Arnold 
do  more  than  throw  light  on  the  quality  of  Lowell's 
penetration.  They  make  clear  the  evil  of  Lowell's 
method.  Laying  out  to  view,  as  he  did,  an  array 
of  separate  qualities  of  different  degrees  of  im 
portance,  and  treating  each  in  isolated  fashion, 
without  any  reference  to  some  radical  principle 
either  in  the  mind  or  art  of  the  author,  Lowell 
cannot  be  acquitted  of  sinning  against  rhetoric 
on  the  one  hand  and  against  criticism  on  the 
other.  His  essays  lack  that  unity  which  comes 
from  the  presence  of  a  dominant  idea,  a  thesis  to 
be  supported,  or  a  point  of  view  steadily  main 
tained.  They  leave  the  reader's  mind  confused 
by  the  array  of  unrelated  qualities  mustered  by 
the  critic,  whose  endeavor  toward  the  end  of  his 
essay  to  concentrate  upon  some  ultimate  quality  as 
the  explanation  of  the  author,  results  in  gener- 


150  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

alities.  Characteristics,  instead  of  being  focused 
into  one,  and  that  circumstanced  and  defined  till 
it  fits  the  single  author  with  a  nice  and  inevitable 
finality,  are  dissipated  into  the  vague  of  a  general 
term.  Not  that  Lowell  always  even  makes  an 
endeavor  to  reach  the  ultimate  quality.  In  Spenser 
he  seems  to  come  close  to  it  without  intention 
when  he  declares : 

The  exultation  with  which  love  sometimes  sub 
tilizes  the  nerves  of  coarsest  men  so  that  they  feel 
and  see  not  the  thing  as  it  seems  to  others,  but  the 
beauty  of  it,  the  joy  of  it,  the  soul  of  eternal  youth 
that  is  in  it,  would  appear  to  have  been  the  normal 
condition  of  Spenser. 

But  if  he  has  touched  the  robes  of  the  goddess  he 
seems  not  to  know  it;  for  he  does  not  make  exal 
tation  of  mind  serve  to  explain  the  other  qualities 
of  Spenser  which  he  indicates, — his  joyousness, 
his  epicureanism  of  language,  his  fervor.  It  is 
much  the  same  in  Dryden :  he  seems  to  have  his 
finger  on  the  poet's  pulse,  but  soon  loses  it. 

This  preponderance  in  him  (Dryden)  of  the  reasoning 
over  the  intuitive  faculties,  the  one  always  there,  the 
other  flashing  in  when  you  least  expect  it,  accounts 
for  that  inequality  and  even  incongruousness  in  his 
writings  which  makes  one  revise  one's  judgment 
at  every  tenth  page. x 
1  Works,  iii.,  120. 


PENETRATION  151 

Does  it  account  for  other  things,  this  preponder 
ance,  for  virtues  as  well  as  vices?  And  what  of 
this  judgment  which  it  forces  us  to  revise  at  every 
tenth  page?  "He  is  a  prose  writer,  with  a  kind 
of  ^Eolian  attachment"1;  he  was  not  primarily  a 
poet. 2  And  yet,  ' '  poet  he  surely  was  intus,  though 
not  always  in  cute/'3  and  so  on.  Is  it  too  much  to 
say  that  though  Lowell  has  his  ringer  on  the  poet's 
pulse  he  loses  it  and  that  his  observations  tend 
to  confuse  instead  of  to  clarify  ?  In  Shakespeare  he 
masses  up  in  the  last  few  pages  the  poet's  quali 
ties;  each  was  possessed  in  the  highest  degree; 
there  is  no  suggestion  of  a  radical  property  of  the 
poet's  mind  or  art  in  which  all  inhere,  no  sugges 
tion  of  any  inter-relation  between  them.  Out  of 
the  aggregate  of  qualities,  6ur  conception  of 
the  poet  wavers  like  a  creature  of  the  mist:  if 
sincere  shall  we  know  it  for  Dante,  if  original 
for  Wordsworth,  if  endowed  with  character  for 
Dry  den? 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Lowell  ignored  the  histori 
cal  method  or  felt  it  too  difficult  for  his  powers. 
It  is  equally  unfortunate  that  for  similar  reasons 
his  was  not  a  biographical  method  of  the  type  of 
Sainte-Beuve's.  If  the  impressions  left  upon  us 
by  Lowell's  essays  are  vague,  so  also  are  the  figures 
of  their  subjects.  Even  the  outer  appearance  of 
a  poet  helps  to  persuade  us  of  his  reality,  and  to 
make  him  ultimately  more  comprehensible  because 

1  Works,  iii.,  120.  3  Ibid.,  iii.,  123.  *  Ibid.,  iii.,  127. 


152  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

more  like  ourselves.     Chaucer's 

downcast  eyes,  half-shy,  half-meditative,  the  sensuous 
mouth,  the  broad  brow,  drooping  with  weight  of 
thought,  and  yet  with  an  inexpugnable  youth  shining 
out  of  it  as  from  the  morning  forehead  of  a  boy,  are  all 
noticeable,  and  not  less  so  their  harmony  of  placid 
tenderness.  We  are  struck,  too,  with  the  smoothness 
of  the  face  as  of  one  who  thought  easily,  whose  phrase 
flowed  naturally,  and  who  had  never  puckered  his 
brow  over  an  unmanageable  verse. J 

For  a  moment  one  feels  that  Chaucer  was  of  the 
earth  earthy,  a  man  like  ourselves.  If  Chaucer's 
life  is  a  secret  well-nigh  buried  with  him,  how  he 
would  seem  to  live  again,  how  much  new  vitality 
would  have  a  renascence  in  his  works  if  only  his 
times  were  drawn  for  us !  What  were  those  brave 
old  days  like,  when  men  went  on  pilgrimages 
over-seas  or  at  home  in  England  to  the  shrine  of 
Canterbury?  When  Wat  Tyler  could  ride  into 
London  with  a  rabble  at  his  heels  and  the  hand 
some  boy-king  could  thrust  a  knife  into  his  breast 
and  put  down  a  rebellion  with  a  smile  and  a 
promise?  One  wonders  whether  Lowell  felt  that 
this  method  lay  beyond  his  powers,  or  whether 
he  failed  to  see  its  advantages. 

The  biographical  method  of  Sainte-Beuve, 
Lowell  himself  attests,  makes  the  French  critic's 
subject  luminous.2  But  in  the  American  critic's 
essays  for  the  most  part  there  is  little  biography, 

1  Works,  iii.,  294.  3  Ibid.,  ii.,  166. 


PENETRATION  153 

except  of  a  perfunctory  kind.  Dryden  represents 
his  best  endeavor  to  interweave  biography  with 
criticism.  The  poet's  life  as  a  chronological 
sequence  is  followed  to  some  extent  in  order  to 
make  clear  the  development  of  his  genius.  Born 
in  1631,  his  earliest  verses,  those  on  the  death  of 
Hastings,  "are  as  bad  as  they  can  be."  After 
ten  fallow  years  he  at  length  makes  his  appearance 
again  in  heroic  stanzas  on  the  death  of  Cromwell. 
"Next  we  have,  in  1660,  Astrcza  Redux  on  the 
'happy  restoration'  of  Charles  II.,"  in  which  one 
can  "forebode  little  of  the  full-grown  Dryden  but 
his  defects."  Meanwhile  Dryden's  taste  gradually 
rises — as  his  prefaces  attest — from  "Cowley  to 
Milton,  from  Corneille  to  Shakespeare."1  It  was 
the  Annus  Mirabilis  written  in  his  thirty-seventh 
year  by  which  he  "won  a  general  acknowledgment 
of  his  powers."2  Dryden  as  a  dramatist  is  next 
taken  up:  "In  the  thirty- two  years  between  1662 
and  1694,  he  produced  twenty-five  plays."  Here 
ends  the  attempt  at  following  the  sequence  of 
Dryden's  life;  the  rest  of  the  essay  is  a  discussion 
of  the  poet  as  "satirist  and  pleader  in  verse,"  his 
prefaces  and  translations  and  his  various  general 
qualities.  In  Dante,  Lowell  approaches  nearest 
among  his  essays  to  that  method  which  in  the 
hands  of  Sainte-Beuve  became  not  merely  bio 
graphical,  but  psychological.  Dante's  writings, 
he  says,  "are  all  (with  the  possible  exception  of 

1  Works,  iii.,  123.  2  Ibid.,  iii.,  133. 


154  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

De  Vulgar i  Eloquio)  autobiographic,  and  all  of 
them,  including  that,  are  parts  of  a  mutually 
related  system  of  which  the  central  part  is  the 
individuality  and  experience  of  the  poet."  The 
critic  tries  to  make  the  various  works  explain 
the  poet.  The  Vita  Nuova,  for  example, 

recounts  the  story  of  his  love  for  Beatrice  Portinari, 
showing  how  his  grief  for  her  loss  turned  his  thoughts 
first  inward  upon  his  own  consciousness,  and,  failing 
all  help  there,  gradually  upward  through  philosophy 
to  religion  and  so  from  a  world  of  shadows  to  one 
of  eternal  substances.1 

Dante's  other  works  are  taken  up  briefly  in  turn 
and  the  critic  hurries  on  to  the  Divina  Commedia. 
The  essay  soon  becomes  a  commentary  on  Dante's 
masterpiece,  with  discussions  now  and  then  of  his 
qualities — his  conservatism,  his  mystical  turn  of 
mind,  his  endowment  of  memory  and  genius,  and 
so  on.  Here  Lowell  goes  back  to  his  usual  method : 
an  enumeration  of  characteristics  not  necessarily 
having  inter-relation,  not  emanating  from  the  same 
radical  elements  in  the  poet's  mind  or  art.  He  is 
at  pains  to  explain  Dante's  philosophy,  the  "dis 
crepancy  between  the  Lady  of  the  Vita  Nuova 
and  her  of  the  Convito"  and  the  like,  nor  "does  he 
speak  without  book."  But  when  all  is  said,  does 
Lowell  reveal  to  us  the  development  of  that 
strangely  isolated  individual,  either  as  moral 

1  Works,  iv.,  148. 


PENETRATION  155 

being  or  as  poet?    Does  he  make  us  feel  the  unity 
of  this  man  who  as  Prior  of  Florence  could  exile 
his  dearest  friend  Cavalcanti,  and  yet  weep  to  see 
the  hapless  lovers  blown  for  evermore  upon  the 
shrilling  winds  of  Hell;  of  this  poet  whose  equal 
vision  could  gaze  upon  the  horrors  of  Malebolge 
and  the  celestial  splendors  of  the  Infinite?     In  a 
word,  has  Lowell  penetrated  into  the  heart  of  this 
Dante,  and  realized  beneath  his  various  qualities 
the  psychological  unity  which  underlay  the  man 
and  the  poet?     One  thinks  of  Sainte-Beuve,  of 
his  power  of  reanimating  the  men  and  women  of 
the  past,  of  placing  them  over  against  friends  and 
foes,  of  making  them  reveal  their  works,  and  their 
works  in  turn  reveal  them,  until  we  view  them 
through  the  eyes  of  the  sanest  and  broadest  and 
most  penetrating  of  their  contemporaries.     One 
thinks  of   Carlyle,  of  those  "  portrait-devouring 
eyes"  of  his,  which  would  have  looked  into  the 
soul  of  Dante  and  made  both  heart  and  mind  of 
him  yield  their  secrets.     If  one  seems  to  demand 
too  much  of  Lowell  by  the  implication  of  such 
comparisons,  there  is  Arnold,  a  critic  in  his  own 
tongue  and  of  his  own  immediate  time. 

Writing  of  Keats, x  Arnold  points  out  that  Keats 
is  eminent  for  the  sensuousness  of  his  poetry. 
"The  question  with  some  people  will  be,  whether 
he  is  anything  else."  From  one  angle,  Keats  seems 
to  have  no  character,  no  self-control,  qualities 

1  Essays  in  Criticism  (26.  Series). 


156  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

indispensable  for  the  great  artist .  Here  is  Arnold '  s 
thesis,  direct,  simple,  falling  back  upon  his  theory 
of  poetry  as  an  interpretation  of  life : 

We  who  believe  Keats  to  have  been  by  his  promise,  at 
any  rate,  if  not  fully  by  his  performance,  one  of  the 
very  greatest  of  English  poets,  and  who  believe  also 
that  a  merely  sensuous  man  cannot  either  by  promise 
or  by  performance  be  a  very  great  poet,  because  poetry 
interprets  life,  and  so  large  and  noble  a  part  of  life 
is  outside  of  such  a  man's  ken, — we  cannot  but  look 
for  signs  in  him  of  something  more  than  sensuousness, 
for  signs  of  character  and  virtue. 

And  with  deftness  and  insight,  the  critic  sets 
about  his  task.  He  quotes  Houghton  and  George 
Keats  in  attestation  of  the  poet's  high  qualities,  and 
he  looks  "for  whatever  illustrates  and  confirms" 
their  testimony.  Keats'  own  words  are  quoted: 
one  gets  to  understand  that  this  sensuous  and  sen 
sitive  consumptive  was  possessed  of  admirable  wis 
dom  and  temper;  of  a  determination  to  "fag  on  as 
others  do  at  periodical  literature,"  to  avoid  en 
dangering  his  independence  and  his  self-respect; 
of  fortitude  in  the  face  of  unjust  criticism,  and  so 
on.  And  out  of  it  all  "the  thing  to  be  seized  on 
is  that  Keats  had  flint  and  iron  in  him,  that  he  had 
character."  And  what  else  of  him? 

1 '  I  have  loved  the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things ' ' 
and  "  if  I  had  had  time  I  would  have  made  myself  re- 


PENETRATION  157 

membered. "  He  has  made  himself  remembered  and 
remembered  as  no  merely  sensuous  poet  could  be; 
and  he  has  done  it  by  having  ' '  loved  the  principle  of 
beauty  in  all  things." 

In  his  Keats,  Lowell  sketches  the  poet's  life. 
He  tells  us  that  Keats  "longed  for  fame,  but  longed 
above  all  to  deserve  it";  that  he  took  the  attacks 
upon  Endymion  in  a  manly  way.  "  A  man  cannot 
have  a  sensuous  nature  and  be  pachydermatous 
at  the  same  time,  and  if  he  be  imaginative  as  well 
as  sensuous,  he  suffers  just  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  his  imagination."  Keats  finally  goes  to 
Italy  broken  in  health,  and  we  are  given  a  letter 
of  his  from  Naples,  feverish,  pitiful.  He  dies 
and  is  buried  in  Rome  with  that  pathetic  epitaph 
upon  his  gravestone.1  One  asks:  Is  that  all?  Is 
there  nothing  beneath  that  eagerness  to  deserve 
fame,  that  manly  bearing  up  under  attack,  that 
sensuous  nature  and  imaginative  temperament, 
the  feverish  morbidity  of  that  letter  from  Naples? 
Is  there  not  a  radical  unity  there  which  makes 
all  these  things  congruous?  One  need  not  believe 
that  Arnold  has  gone  to  the  root  of  the  matter; 
but  there  is  penetration,  psychological  penetration, 
in  his  brief  study. 

Lowell,  one  remembers,  was  essentially  a  man 
of  books.  It  is  significant  that  he  could  write: 
"Nor  am  I  offended  with  this  odor  of  the  library 

1  "  Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water." 


158  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

that  hangs  about  Gray,  for  it  recalls  none  but  de 
lightful  associations."  *     The  tenor  of  his  way  was 
apart  from  the  highroad  of  men,  far  from  the  heat 
and  din  of  the  market-place.     One  associates  him 
with    Cambridge,    with    long   hours    spent    over 
favorite  volumes,  with  a  handful  of  intimates  at 
whist  or  dinner,  or  fulfilling  the  duties  of  class 
room    or    sanctum.     Did    he    understand    men? 
One  recalls  his  letter  to  Briggs  in  1845,  lamenting 
that  as  a  man  he  was  not  appreciated  or  under 
stood,  and  that  other  letter  to  Holmes  with  its 
pert  condemnation  of  a  man  ten  years  his  senior 
whom  he  scarcely  knew.     Then  there  is  his  letter 
to  the  editor  of  Putnam's,   condemning  as  the 
"mob"  that  public  which  was  bored  by  his  im 
possible   comic   poem;   there   are   the   recondite 
allusions  constantly  cropping  out  in  his  political 
essays   and   the   sophomoricisms   in   his   literary 
studies  which  offend  good  taste — one  wonders  if 
the  man  who  was  guilty  of  these  lapses  really 
understood  men  himself.     In  Lowell's  letters  one 
finds  no  evidence   of  psychological     penetration 
and  the  same  is  true  of  those  of  his  dispatches  from 
Madrid  which  we  now  have  as  Impressions  of 
Spain.     One  gets  delightful  sketches  of  men  from 
the  outside,  like  that  of  Franklin  Pierce, 2  and  that 
more  elaborate  one  of  Canovas  in  the  Spanish 
dispatches.3    There  is  no  quarrel  with  these;  it 

1  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  39. 

2  Letters,  i.f  302  ff.  *  Impressions  of  Spain,  p.  29  ff. 


PENETRATION  159 

may  even  be  that  one  has  no  right  to  expect  more. 
But  one  has  a  right  to  look  for  psychological  in 
sight  in  the  critical  essays ;  if  it  is  wanting  in  them 
can  they  be  called  critical  in  any  serious  sense? 
This  question  is  worth  further  consideration. 

In  his  essay  on  Carlyle,  Lowell  discusses  Carlyle 
the  man.  ' '  In  the  earlier  part  of  his  literary  career 
Mr.  Carlyle  was  the  preacher  up  of  sincerity,  man 
liness,  and  a  living  faith.  ...  He  had  intense 
convictions  and  he  made  disciples."  He  became 
popular:  "His  fervor,  his  oddity  of  manner,  his 
pugnacious  paradox,  drew  the  crowd."  Once 
become  popular,  "he  must  attract,  he  must  aston 
ish."  Why  was  this  necessity  upon  him?  Be 
cause  the  excitement  of  making  a  sensation  becomes 
a  necessity  of  the  successful  author.*  Carlyle,  he 
goes  on,  "continues  to  be  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  but  no  longer  a  voice  with  any  earnest 
conviction  behind  it."  Whether  this  conclusion 
be  just  or  not,  one  need  not  stop  to  inquire.  But 
one  is  obliged  to  ask,  is  there  psychological  pene 
tration  behind  that  conclusion?  Has  the  crier- 
down  of  sham  become  himself  a  "mountebank  of 
genius"  because  the  excitement  of  making  a  sensa 
tion  becomes  a  necessity  of  the  successful  author? 
In  Rousseau,  after  following  faithfully  in  the  wake 
of  the  critic,  one  is  finally  forced  to  ask:  Is  Rous 
seau  after  all  only  a  baffling  psychological  anomaly, 
an  aggregate  of  irreconcilable  contradictions? 

1  Works,  ii.,  107.     The  italics  are  mine. 


i6o  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Here  is  the  critic's  answer:  "It  would  be  sheer 
waste  of  time  to  hunt  Rousseau  through  all  his 
doublings  of  inconsistency,  and  run  him  to  earth 
in  every  new  paradox."  When  Lowell  writes  of 
Gray,  he  shows  a  certain  penetration  born  of 
sympathy  for  one  in  whom  he  saw  a  weakness 
akin  to  his  own.  Bonstetten,  he  says,  records  the 
melancholy  from  which  Gray  suffered,  and  for 
which  Sainte-Beuve  accounted  by  alleging  "la 
sterilite  d'un  talent  poetique  si  distingue,  si  rare, 
mais  si  avare."  Says  Lowell: 

Sainte-Beuve  is  perhaps  partly  right,  but  it  may  be 
fairly  surmised  that  the  remorse  for  intellectual  indo 
lence  should  have  had  some  share  in  making  Gray 
unwilling  to  recall  the  time  when  he  was  better  em 
ployed  than  in  filling  in  coats-of-arms  on  the  margin 
of  Dugdale  and  correcting  the  Latin  of  Linnaeus. 

And  behind  that  intellectual  indolence — what? 
...  It  is  worth  while  to  quote  Arnold.  Writing 
on  Gray,  Arnold  also  quotes  Bonstetten;  then  he 
adds: 

Sainte-Beuve,  who  was  much  attracted  and  interested 
by  Gray,  doubts  whether  Bonstetten's  explanation  of 
him  is  admissible1;  the  secret  of  Gray's  melancholy  he 
finds  rather  in  the  sterility  of  his  poetic  talent,  .  .  . 
in  the  poet's  despair  at  his  own  unproductiveness. 
But  to  explain  Gray,  we  must  do  more  than  allege  his 

1  Bonstetten  had  said:  "I  believe  that  Gray  had  never  loved; 
this  was  the  key  to  the  riddle. " 


PENETRATION  161 

sterility,  as  we  must  look  further  than  to  his  seclusion 
at  Cambridge.  What  caused  his  sterility?  Was  it 
his  ill-health,  his  hereditary  gout?  .  .  .  What  gave 
the  power  to  Gray's  reclusion  and  ill-health  to  induce 
his  sterility?1 

Arnold's  answer  is  this:  Gray  fell  upon  an  age  of 
prose;  "with  the  qualities  of  mind  and  soul  of  a 
genuine  poet,"  he  was  "born  out  of  date,  a  man 
whose  full  spiritual  flowering  was  impossible."2 
Whether  or  not  one  agree  with  Arnold's  conclusion 
one  comes  to  realize  that  there  is  a  difference 
between  that  penetration  which  stops  short  and 
that  other  which  seeks  to  pierce  to  the  heart  of 
things.  One  might  go  on,  examining  the  essays 
in  detail;  the  conclusion  is  inescapable:  the  quest 
for  anything  approaching  sustained  psychological 
penetration  will  go  unrewarded. 

This  weakness  for  stopping  short  of  the  ultimate 
betrays  itself  in  other  ways.  In  Lessing,  Lowell 
discusses  the  German  type  of  mind,  its  "inability 
or  disinclination  to  see  a  thing  as  it  really  is,  unless 
it  be  a  matter  of  science."3  But  still  it  is  a  thor 
ough  mind  to  which  we  owe  much.  He  goes  on : 

The  sense  of  heaviness  which  creeps  over  the  reader 
from  so  many  German  books  is  mainly  due,  we  suspect, 
to  the  language,  which  seems  well-nigh  incapable  of 
that  aerial  perspective  so  delightful  in  first-rate  French 

1  Essays  in  Criticism  (26.  series),  p.  90  ff. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  92  ff,  3  Works,  ii.,  163. 


162  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

and  even  English  writing.  But  there  must  also  be  in 
the  national  character  an  insensibility  to  proportion,  a 
want  of  that  instinctive  discretion  which  we  call  tact. I 

Speaking  of  the  Germans,  Arnold  says : 

You  have  the  Germanic  genius :  steadiness  with  honesty. 
.  .  .  Steadiness  with  honesty;  the  danger  for  a 
national  spirit  thus  composed  is  the  humdrum,  the 
plain  and  ugly,  the  ignoble:  in  a  word,  das  Gemeine, 
die  Gemeinheit  .  .  .  The  excellence  of  a  national 
spirit  thus  composed  is  freedom  from  whim,  flightiness, 
perseverance;  patient  fidelity  to  Nature, — in  a  word, 
science.  .  .  The  universal  dead-level  of  plainness  and 
homeliness,  the  lack  of  all  beauty  and  distinction  in 
form  and  feature,  the  slowness  and  clumsiness  of  the 
language  .  .  .  this  is  the  weak  side.2 

One  sees  that  Arnold  has  delved  under  Lowell 
and  sought  the  ultimate. 

Such  weakness  in  penetration  as  one  finds  in 
Lowell,  betrayed  itself  at  times  in  his  uncertain 
groping  for  the  exact  thought  which  he  wanted  to 
express.  He  seems  to  be  seeking  to  pierce  through 
his  impressions  to  what  was  exact  and  basic  be 
yond  them. 

How  unlike  is  the  operation  of  the  imaginative  faculty 
in  him  (Chaucer)  and  Shakespeare!  When  the  latter 
describes,  his  epithets  imply  always  an  impression  on 

1  Works,  ii.,  167.  a  Celtic  Literature,  p.  74. 


PENETRATION  163 

the  moral  sense  (so  to  speak)  of  the  person  who  hears 
or  sees.  The  sun  "flatters  the  mountain-tops  with 
sovereign  eye";  the  bending  " weeds  lacquey  the  dull 
stream" ;  the  shadow  of  the  falcon  "coucheth  the  fowl 
below" ;  the  smoke  is  "helpless" ;  when  Tarquin  enters 
the  chamber  of  Lucrece  "the  threshold  grates  the  door 
to  have  him  heard."  His  outward  sense  is  merely  a 
window  through  which  the  metaphysical  eye  looks 
forth,  and  his  mind  passes  over  at  once  from  the  simple 
sensation  to  the  complex  meaning  of  it, — feels  with 
the  object  instead  of  merely  feeling  it.  His  imagina 
tion  is  forever  dramatizing.  Chaucer  gives  only  the 
direct  impression  made  on  the  eye  or  ear.1 

One  can  imagine  readily  with  what  incisiveness 
and  yet  with  what  breadth  of  implication  Cole 
ridge  would  have  put  that  thought.  Comparing 
Schiller  and  Shakespeare,  Coleridge  says:  "Schiller 
has  the  material  sublime;  to  produce  an  effect,  he 
sets  you  a  whole  town  on  fire,  and  throws  infants 
with  their  mothers  into  the  flames,  or  locks  up  a 
father  in  an  old  tower.  But  Shakespeare  drops  a 
handkerchief  and  the  same  or  greater  effects 
follow."2  Instances  of  this  groping  are  common 
enough  in  Lowell.  Regarding  Spenser  he  says: 
"He  is  full  of  feeling,  and  yet  of  such  a  kind  that 
we  can  neither  say  it  is  mere  intellectual  percep 
tion  of  what  is  fair  and  good,  nor  yet  associate  it 
with  that  throbbing  fervor  which  leads  us  to  call 

1  Works,  iii.,  354  ff. 

a  Coleridge's  Works,  vi.,  255  ff. 


1 64  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

sensibility  by  the  physical  name  of  heart."1 
Again:  [Chaucer] 

is  original,  not  in  the  sense  that  he  thinks  and  says 
.  .  .  what  nobody  can  ever  think  and  say  again,  but 
because  he  is  always  natural,  because,  if  not  always 
absolutely  new,  he  is  always  delightfully  fresh,  because 
he  sets  before  us  the  world  as  it  honestly  appeared  to 
Geoffrey  Chaucer,  and  not  a  world  as  it  seemed  proper 
to  certain  people  that  it  ought  to  appear. a 

At  other  times,  Lowell's  weakness  in  penetra 
tion  gives  one  the  feeling  that  words  are  being 
forced  to  do  the  duty  of  ideas.  Shakespeare's 
moral,  he  tells  us,  "is  the  moral  of  worldly  wisdom 
only  heightened  to  the  level  of  his  wide- viewing 
mind,  and  made  typical  by  the  dramatic  energy 
of  his  plastic  nature."3  The  critic  was  not  con 
sciously  superficial ;  he  had  without  doubt  a  feeling 
that  there  was  a  point  to  be  made.  But  in  instan 
ces  like  these,  he  seems  to  have  crystallized  that 
feeling  not  into  thought  but  into  language.  His 
phrasal  power  indeed,  so  characteristic  of  poets 
in  their  prose,  sometimes  wins  us  to  an  acceptance 
of  his  statements  as  charged  with  a  thoiightfulness 
or  penetration  which  they  will  not  yield  on  analy 
sis.  The  following  is  worth  examination : 

Had  Shakespeare  been  born  fifty  years  earlier,  he 

1  Lowell's  Works,  iv.,  326. 

2  Ibid.,  iii.,  361.  3  Ibid.,  iii.,  324. 


PENETRATION  165 

would  have  been  cramped  by  a  book-language  not 
yet  flexible  enough  for  the  demands  of  rhythmic 
emotion,  not  yet  sufficiently  popularized  for  the 
natural  and  familiar  expression  of  supreme  thought,  not 
yet  so  rich  in  metaphysical  phrase  as  to  render  possible 
that  ideal  representation  of  the  great  passions  which 
is  the  aim  and  end  of  Art,  not  yet  subdued  by 
practice  and  general  consent  to  a  definiteness  of  ac 
centuation  essential  to  ease  and  congruity  of  metrical 
arrangement.1 

One  recalls  that  Berner's  Froissart,  in  1523, 
"made  a  landmark  in  our  tongue"2;  that  Tyn- 
dale's  Translation  of  the  New  Testament,  in  1525, 
"fixed  our  standard  English  once  for  all."3  One 
recalls  that  Chaucer,  who  had  died  in  1400,  had 
surprised  words  "into  grace,  ease,  and  dignity 

1  Works,  iii.,  2. 

3  Brooke,  English  Literature,  p.  83. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  84.  "Tyndale's  translation  of  the  New  Testament 
is  the  most  important  philological  monument  of  the  first  half 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  perhaps  I  should  say  of  the  whole  period 
between  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare."  It  "more  than  anything 
else  contributed  to  shape  and  fix  the  sacred  dialect,  and  establish 
the  form  which  the  Bible  must  permanently  assume  in  an  English 
dress.  The  best  features  of  the  translation  of  1611  are  derived 
from  the  version  of  Tyndale,  and  thus  that  remarkable  work 
has  exerted,  directly  and  indirectly,  a  more  powerful  influence 
on  the  English  language  than  any  other  single  production  be 
tween  the  ages  of  Richard  II.  and  Queen  Elizabeth."  Marsh, 
English  Language,  p.  113.  Says  Brooke,  English  Literature,  p. 
84:  "Of  the  6000  words  of  the  Authorized  Version  still  in  great 
part  his  (Tyndale's)  translation,  only  250  are  not  now  in  common 
use." 


1 66  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

in  their  own  despite,"  had  achieved  an  "airiness 
of  sentiment  and  expression,  a  felicity  of  phrase 
and  an  elegance  of  turn";  that  he  was  great  in 
narrative,  in  description,  in  command  of  satire, 
of  pathos,  of  humor,  and  yet  withal  "he  was  also 
one  of  the  best  versifiers  that  ever  made  English  trip 
and  sing  .  .  .  every  foot  beats  time  to  the  tune 
of  the  thought." r  If,  finally  then,  Chaucer  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  could  make 
language  to  his  will  because  "he  was  a  great  poet, 
to  whom  measure  was  a  natural  vehicle,  "2  are  we 
to  believe  that  a  greater  poet,  with  the  language  of 
Tyndale  as  well  as  that  of  Chaucer,  would  have 
made  Venus  and  Adonis  a  less  notable  premiere 
ceuvre  of  genius  had  it  been  possible  to  come  from 
his  hands  in  1543  instead  of  in  1593? 

This  subject  of  the  possibilities  of  language  in 
the  hands  of  a  poet  is  a  favorite  one  with  Lowell. 
He  is  constantly  emphasizing  the  value  of  diction. 
"Men's  thoughts  and  opinions  are  in  a  great  degree 
vassals  of  him  who  invents  a  new  phrase  or  re- 
applies  an  old  epithet.  The  thought  or  feeling  a 
thousand  times  repeated  becomes  his  at  last  who 
utters  it  best."3  He  likes  also  to  discuss  a  poet's 
use  of  words,  and  to  trace  influences  of  versifica 
tion  and  of  style.4 

'  Works,  iii.,  329;  322;  351 ;  323;  352;  336. 
3  Ibid.,  iii.,  345.  »  Ibid.,  i.,  245. 

*  The  influences  he  discovers  are  sometimes  confusing:  Milton's 
teacher  in  versification  was  Marlowe  (Works,  i.t  277);  later  he 


PENETRATION  167 

It  may  be  thought  [he  says  in  Spenser],  that  I  lay  too 
much  stress  on  this  single  attribute  of  diction.  But 
...  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  is  subtle  per 
fection  of  phrase  and  that  happy  coalescence  of 
music  and  meaning,  where  each  reinforces  the  other, 
that  define  a  man  as  poet  and  make  all  ears  con 
verts  and  partisans.1 

When  Lowell  comes  to  the  discussion  of  prose 
writers,  one  expects  him  to  pay  the  same  attention 
to  the  influence  of  ideas  as,  in  the  case  of  poets,  he 
paid  to  diction.  Has  Carlyle  exerted  a  definite 
influence  on  the  thought  of  his  generation?  He 
revealed,  says  Lowell,  to  those  who  listened  to  him 
in  his  prime,  the  "sublime  reserves  of  power  even 
the  humblest  may  find  in  manliness,  sincerity, 
and  self-reliance."2  We  must  be  content  with  the 
indefinite  statement  that  he  had  great  value  as 
"an  inspirer  and  awakener."2  As  for  Emerson: 
"What  does  he  mean,  quotha?  He  means  inspir 
ing  hints,  a  divining-rod  to  your  deeper  nature."3 
Has  he  exerted  a  definite  influence  on  his  genera 
tion?  Lowell  answers:  much  of  the  country's 
"intellectual  emancipation  was  due  to  the  stimu 
lus  of  his  teaching  and  example" ;  he  kept  burning 
"the  beacon  of  an  ideal  life  above  our  lower  region 

says  Spenser  (Works,  iv.,  305);  later  still  he  convinces  himself  "of 
what  I  had  long  taken  for  granted,  that  his  versification  was 
mainly  modelled  on  the  Italian  and  especially  on  the  Divina 
Commedia."  (Letters,  ii.,  386.) 

1  Works,  iv.,  308.  *Ibtd.,  ii.,  118.  *  Ibid.,  i.,  352. 


168  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

of  turmoil."  What  has  he  told  us  definitely  in 
Rousseau  about  sentimentalism?  What  has  he 
told  us  at  all  about  the  influence  of  Richardson 
in  France  or  in  Europe,  or  about  his  connection 
with  Rousseau?  In  Coleridge  what  has  he  said 
definitely  about  the  influence  of  the  greatest  of 
English  critics?  His  "service  was  incalculable"; 
the  subtle  apprehension  of  his  mind  seems  an 
instinct;  he  was  "the  first  in  noting  some  of  the 
more  occult  phenomena  of  thought  and  emotion." 
And  Fielding?  He  discusses  his  comedies,  but 
says  of  his  influence  only  that  he  was  an  originator 
who  invented  the  realistic  novel.1  What  of  the 
influence  of  these  men,  what  pregnant  ideas  of 
theirs  took  root  and  modified  the  opinions  or 
thoughts  of  others?  One  will  meet,  it  must  be 
confessed,  no  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question 
by  a  diligent  search  through  Lowell's  works. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  Lowell's 
sympathy  with  certain  phases  of  literature  was 
imperfect.  That  imperfect  sympathy  was  due 
not  only  to  a  certain  narrowness  in  Lowell  himself 
but  to  the  inadequacy  of  his  penetration.  In  his 
works  and  letters  one  finds  few  references  to  the 
novelists;  his  Fielding  is  not  the  work  of  a  man 
who  regarded  the  novel  as  a  type  of  literary  expres 
sion  which  even  before  his  own  day  had  become 
of  prime  importance.  His  chief  interest  in  fiction 

1  Works,  vi.,  64. 


PENETRATION  169 

seems  to  have  been  as  a  relaxation.1  No  hint 
appears  that  he  realized  how  powerful  a  factor 
the  novel  had  become  in  modern-day  life ;  how 
much  of  the  place  once  occupied  by  Chaucer  and 
Spenser,  by  Shakespeare  and  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  by  Dry  den  and  Pope  and  Restoration 
Comedy,  has  been  gradually  preempted  by 
Richardson  and  Fielding  and  Scott  and  Jane 
Austen,  and  in  Lowell's  own  day  by  Thackeray 
and  Dickens  and  George  Eliot.  In  the  hands  of 
these  masters,  the  novel  was  a  work  of  art  as 
certainly  as  the  narrative  poem  with  Chaucer  and 
the  drama  with  Shakespeare.  The  Newcomes 
and  David  Copperfield  and  Middlemarch  have  a 
deeper  significance  than  the  passing  of  a  pleasant 
hour.  They  are  the  expression  of  their  day,  its 
doubts  and  fears,  its  faith,  its  opinions,  its  aspira 
tions.  Lowell  demanded  of  poetry  that  it  be  the 
expression  of  its  own  time;  but  this  other  literary 
form,  which  had  come  to  be  the  most  powerful 
vehicle  of  human  emotion,  seems  to  have  had  to 
his  mind  no  significance.  In  his  eyes  Fielding 
had  been  a  great  man,  for  all  men  have  accepted 
him  and  he  is  a  classic.  But  he  is  of  interest  to 
the  critic  not  for  what  he  stands  for  of  himself, 
but  because  he  can  be  referred  to  in  connection 
with  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare. 

To  weakness  of  penetration  no  less  than   to 

1  Letters,  i.,  390  ff.    Cf.  Letters,  ii.,  433:  "I  read  novels  .  .  . 
a  new  habit  with  me. " 


170  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

imperfect  sympathy  is  also  to  be  ascribed  Lowell's 
sweeping  condemnation  of  Victorian  poets  who 
have  employed  Greek  and  medieval  themes.  The 
pivotal  point,  he  holds,  of  Greek  motivation  is 
Fate  and  thus  an  essential  difference  separates 
the  Greeks  from  us.1  Thus  the  Greek  point  of 
view  must  be  to  our  eyes  purely  factitious ;  Merope 
and  Atalanta  and  the  rest  are  ultimately  not  a 
reality  but  an  imitation.2  Lowell,  it  is  worth 
remembering,  does  not  level  his  criticisms  against 
other  than  Victorian  poets  who  sought  Greek  or 
medieval  themes.  It  may  be  that  his  conserva 
tism  would  not  warrant  his  pushing  his  belief  to 
its  logical  conclusion  and  thus  including  in  his 
condemnation  a  line  of  poets  from  Chaucer 
through  Keats.  The  merit  of  his  contention  in 
the  abstract  need  not  detain  us.  But  one  feels 
that  he  has  failed  to  see  that  the  Greek  spirit  and 
the  medieval  spirit  have  not  without  reason  at 
tracted  many  minds  in  the  nineteenth  century; 
that  it  is  this  spirit,  only  when  clothed  in  essential 
humanity,  which  is  ultimately  the  life-giving 
element  in  the  Greek  and  the  medieval  stories; 
that  love  and  hatred  and  desire  and  the  heart 
break  of  shattered  ideals  are  of  all  time  and  may 
be  woven  into  a  Grecian  boar-hunt  or  a  tourna 
ment  below  Camelot,  as  well  as  into  the  life  of 
modern  Boston  or  London.3  Lowell  seems  to 

1  Works,  ii.,  124  ff.  3  Ibid.,  ii.,  134. 

*  On  this  point  cf.  Swinburne,  Essays  and  Studies,  p.  97. 


PENETRATION  171 

have  limited  his  objections  to  poetry.     Against 
Scott's  novels  he  makes  no  protest.     Perhaps  it 
is  significant  of  the  relatively  unimportant  place 
which  the  novel  occupies  in  his  mind  in  comparison 
with  poetry,  that  he  should  object  to  the  theme 
of  the  Idylls  of  the  King  but  not  to  that  of  Ivanhoe. 
In  more  than  one  notable  instance,  one  finds 
Lowell  strangely  oblivious  to  merits  which  are  too 
eminent  to  pass  without  recognition.     One  reads: 
"The  Saxon  was  never,  to  any  great  extent,  a 
literary  language."1    Again:  "The  Anglo-Saxons 
never  had  any  real  literature  of  their  own.     They 
produced  monkish  chronicles  in  bad  Latin,  and 
legends  of  saints  in  worse  metre."2     Lowell  would 
probably  not  assume  so  dogmatic  an  attitude  to 
day,  since  during  the  last  forty  years  there  have 
become  more  widespread  an  understanding  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  language  and  an  appreciation  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  literature.     Lowell  was  a  student  of 
the  language,  it  is  true,  but  always  the  conserva 
tive,  was  not  the  man  to  blaze  new  paths,  even  in 
the  domain  of  literature.     With  no  less  surprise 
one  notes  his  failure  in  his  Chaucer  to  mention 
Troilus  and  Criseyde,  that  study  of  feminine  psy 
chology    unsurpassed    in    English    literature    for 
subtlety  and  penetration.     Here  again,  however, 
one  is  to  remember  that  adequate    appreciation 
of  this  poem  was  not  usual  a  generation  ago.     The 
question  comes  to  mind:  Would  not  a  genuine 

1  Works,  iii.,  II.  *  Ibid.,  iii.,  320. 


172  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

penetration  have  triumphed  over  such  conserva 
tism  and  proclaimed  a  merit  even  though  but  few 
eyes  had  already  perceived  it? 

One  more  phase  of  Lowell's  lack  of  penetration 
remains  to  be  noted.  In  discussing  the  Eliza 
bethan  dramatists,  he  says:  "To  some  of  them  we 
cannot  deny  genius,  but  creative  genius  we  must 
deny  to  all  of  them,  and  dramatic  genius  as  well." I 
This  seems  a  surprising  statement  when  one  re 
calls  The  Silent  Woman,  New  Way  to  Pay  Old 
Debts,  and  The  Maid's  Tragedy,  to  name  no  more. 
But  Lowell's  attitude  is  not  difficult  to  understand. 
The  Elizabethan  dramatists,  he  assures  us,  are 
"the  best  comment  ...  to  convince  us  of  the 
immeasurable  superiority  of  Shakespeare."2  It 
has  already  been  pointed  out  that  Lowell's  atti 
tude  towards  Shakespeare  is  one  of  admiration 
to  which  no  laudation  seems  extravagant.  He  is 
the  "miracle  of  Stratford,"  and  in  the  process  of 
his  apotheosis,  "creative  genius"  and  "dramatic 
genius"  must  be  held  as  the  sacred  possession  of 
him  alone.  What  again  becomes  of  Lowell's 
penetration?  Before  the  radiant  figure  of  his 
literary  god,  it  seems  to  vanish  into  thin  air. 

1  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  24.  3  Ibid.,  p.  26. 


CHAPTER  VI 
LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND 

LOWELL,  it  has  been  already  suggested,  was 
a  conservative.  "I  was  always  a  natural 
tory,"  he  wrote,  "and  in  England  .  .  .  should  be 
a  staunch  one.  I  would  not  give  up  a  thing  that 
had  roots  to  it,  though  it  might  suck  up  its  food 
from  graveyards."1  In  religion,  also,  whatever 
doubts  may  have  assailed  him,  he  was  a  conser 
vative.2  "  I  look  upon  a  belief  as  none  the  worse 
but  rather  the  better  for  being  hereditary,  prizing 
as  I  do  whatever  helps  to  give  continuity  to  the 
being  and  doing  of  man,  and  an  accumulated 
force  to  his  character."3  In  the  sphere  of  litera 
ture  it  was  the  same.  He  approaches  a  considera 
tion  of  the  classics  of  language  with  a  realization 
that  they  are  great  by  universal  consent  and  with 
a  determination  to  find  in  them  what  others  have 
discovered.  "What,"  he  asks,  "is  a  classic,  if  it 
be  not  a  book  that  forever  delights,  inspires,  and 
surprises, — in  which  and  in  ourselves,  by  its  help, 
we  make  new  discoveries  every  day?"4  Works 

1  Letters,  ii.,  136.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  325.  a  Ibid.,  ii.,  152. 

"  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  143. 
173 


174  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

which  have  lasted  generations  he  cannot  approach 
except  from  the  traditional  viewpoint  of  accept 
ance.  His  whole  attitude  may  be  seen  in  his 
experience  with  Hamlet: 

Many  years  ago  ...  I  pleased  myself  with  imagining 
the  play  of  Hamlet  published  under  some  alias,  as 
the  work  of  a  new  candidate  in  literature.  Then  I 
played  .  .  .  that  it  came  in  regular  course  before 
some  well-meaning  doer  of  criticisms,  who  had  never 
read  the  original,  .  .  .  and  endeavored  to  conceive  the 
kind  of  way  in  which  he  would  be  likely  to  take  it.  I 
put  myself  in  his  place,  and  tried  to  write  such  a 
perfunctory  notice  as  I  thought  would  be  likely,  in 
filling  his  column,  to  satisfy  his  conscience.  But  it 
was  a  tour  de  force  ...  I  could  not  arrive  at  that 
artistic  absorption  in  my  own  conception  which 
would  enable  me  to  be  natural  .  .  .  My  result  was  a 
dead  failure  ...  I  could  not  shake  off  that  strange 
accumulation  which  we  call  self,  and  report  honestly 
what  I  saw  and  felt  even  to  myself,  much  less  to 
others.1 

This  is  the  epitome  of  Lowell's  conservatism  as  it 
concerns  the  classics  of  literature. 

Not  so  fundamental  as  Lowell's  conservatism, 
though  none  the  less  an  element  in  him  with  which 
one  must  reckon,  was  his  enthusiasm,  which  has 
been  spoken  of  in  another  place.  His  enthusiasm, 
positive  and  negative,  if  it  may  be  so  distinguished, 
is  scarcely  ever  in  abeyance.  One  can  feel  it 

1  Works,  iii.,  28  ff. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  175 

gathering  in  intensity  as  it  proceeds.  Starting 
with  the  declaration,  "My  respect  for  what  Les- 
sing  was,  and  for  what  he  did,  is  profound," 
Lowell's  expression  of  respect  moves  onward 
through  "Greater  poets  she  (Germany)  has  had, 
but  no  greater  writer,"  till  by  the  end  of  a  page 
it  becomes  such  high  admiration  as  this : 

The  figure  of  Goethe  is  grand,  it  is  rightfully  pre 
eminent,  it  has  something  of  the  calm,  and  some 
thing  of  the  coldness,  of  the  immortals;  but  the 
Valhalla  of  German  letters  can  show  one  form,  in  its 
simple  manhood,  statelier  even  than  his.1 

The  critic's  enthusiasms  in  the  case  of  many 
authors  were  abiding  but  so  exclusive  in  their 
nature  as  to  lead  him  into  extravagances  of  state 
ment  which  he  was  afterwards  forced  to  contradict. 2 
His  negative  enthusiasms,  especially  when  con 
cerned  with  a  writer  for  whom  his  conservatism 
does  not  demand  deep  acknowledgment,  is  no 
less  conspicuous.  Beginning  with  the  declaration, 
"Skelton  was  an  exceptional  blossom  of  autumn," 
he  continues : 

A  long  and  dreary  winter  follows.  Surrey  ...  is 
to  some  extent  another  exception  .  .  .  but  he  has  no 
mastery  of  verse,  nor  any  elegance  of  diction.  We 

1  Works,  ii.,  171  ff. 

2  E.  g.,  cf.  Works,  iii.,  92,  with  ibid.,  ii.,  244;    Works,  iii.,  36, 
with  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  114,  etc. 


176  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

have  Gascoigne,  Surrey,  Wyatt,  stiff,  pedantic, 
artificial,  systematic  as  a  country  cemetery,  and, 
worst  of  all,  the  whole  time  desperately  in  love  .  .  . 
They  are  said  to  have  refined  our  language.  Let  us 
devoutly  hope  they  did,  for  it  would  be  pleasant  to  be 
grateful  to  them  for  something, x 

and  so  on. 

Lowell  was  to  a  considerable  extent  a  creature 
of  moods;  their  influence  at  times  betrays  itself 
in  his  essays.  The  eighteenth  century  is  not  a 
favorite  with  him  but  in  Gray*  he  writes:  "As  one 
grows  older,  one  finds  more  points  of  half -reluc 
tant  sympathy  with  that  undyspeptic  and  rather 
worldly  period."  He  goes  on  praising  its 

cheerfulness  and  contentment  with  things  as  they 
were  ...  If  there  was  discontent,  it  was  in  the 
individual,  and  not  in  the  air  ...  Post  and  tele 
graph  were  not  so  importunate  as  now  .  .  .  Man 
ners  occupied  more  time  and  were  allowed  more 
space. 

Finally  after  nearly  three  pages  of  laudation,  he 
confesses:  "This,  no  doubt,  is  the  view  of  a  special 
mood,  but  it  is  a  mood  that  grows  upon  us  the 
longer  we  have  stood  upon  our  lees."  This  "view 
of  a  special  mood"  was  beyond  question  not  in- 

1  Works,  iv.,  274.  It  was  Poe  who  wrote  of  Lowell,  "He  must 
be  a  fanatic  in  whatever  circumstances  you  place  him."  Poe's 
Works,  vi.,  240.  3  Latest  Literary  Essays. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  177 

frequent  with  Lowell.  It  never,  one  may  believe, 
interferes  with  his  final  pronouncements  on  a 
classic  author  to  whom  he  devotes  an  essay,  but 
it  sometimes  affects  the  tone  with  which  he  dis 
cusses  single  qualities.  Is  he  weary  of  what  he 
regards  as  the  morbid  egotism  of  his  own  day? 
Then  he  must  laud  Shakespeare's  serene  restraint 
which  kept  him  from  talking  of  himself, x  or  Dry- 
den's  quality  of  "  bio  wing  the  mind  clear."2  Is 
he  tired  from  over-reading?  Then  Wordsworth 
"wrote  too  much  to  write  always  well,"  though 
his  product  is  by  no  means  notably  large.  These 
moods  he  allows  to  affect  him  even  more  in  the 
case  of  less  important  writers.  Fagged  out  with 
long  reading,  his  mood  is  obvious  in  his  attack  on 
Gower : 

Love,  beauty,  passion,  nature,  art,  life,  the  natural 
and  theological  virtues, — there  is  nothing  beyond 
his  power  to  disenchant,  nothing  out  of  which  the 
tremendous  hydraulic  press  of  his  allegory  .  .  . 
will  not  squeeze  all  feeling  and  freshness  and  leave 
it  a  juiceless  pulp.3 

Angry  at  British  editors,  he  brands  Halliwell's 
Marston  as  "the  worst  edition  we  ever  saw  of  any 
author."4  This  until  he  comes  to  another  editor 

1  Works,  iii.,  94. 

3  Ibid.,  iii.,  189.  "To  look  at  all  sides,  and  to  distrust  the 
verdict  of  a  single  mood,  is,  no  doubt,  the  duty  of  a  critic." 
Works,  iii.,  114.  s  Zbid.t  iii.,  330.  *  Ibid.,  i.,  272. 

12 


178  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

in  the  same  series,  and  then,  "Of  all  Mr.  Smith's 
editors,  Mr.  W.  Carew  Hazlitt  is  the  worst."1 

The  secret  of  Lowell,  however,  does  not  end  with 
mood  or  enthusiasm ;  going  even  deeper,  it  does  not 
end  with  conservatism.  In  a  letter  of  December 
15,  1849,  Fredrika  Bremer  wrote  of  Lowell  and 
his  wife : 

Her  mind  has  more  philosophical  depth  than  his. 
.  .  .  He  seemed  to  me  occasionally  to  be  brilliant, 
witty,  gay,  especially  in  the  evening,  when  he  has 
what  he  calls  his  "evening  fever,"  when  his  talk 
is  like  an  incessant  play  of  fireworks.2 

Lack  of  philosophical  depth.  The  weakness  which 
Miss  Bremer  discovered  is  worthy  of  an  examina 
tion.  If  it  proves  to  be  true  it  will  make  many 
things  clear. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  Lowell 
failed  to  get  to  the  heart  of  things  and  of  men. 
The  subject  is  worth  further  scrutiny.  Complex 
characters  eluded  him.  One  feels  a  certain  satis 
faction  in  his  study  of  such  men  as  Lessing  with 
his  "simple  manhood,"3  and  of  Landor,  fragmen 
tary  though  it  is,  for  in  them  were  no  subtleties  to 

1  Works,  i.,  304. 

3  Homes  of  the  New  World,  i.f  134.  Lowell  wrote  of  Miss 
Bremer:  "She  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  persons  I  have  ever 
known — so  clear,  so  simple,  so  right-minded  and  -hearted,  and 
so  full  of  judgment."  Letters  i.,  174.  The  last  four  words  are 
worth  noting.  *  Works,  ii.,  172. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  179 

baffle  him.  But  Thoreau  he  cannot  understand; 
he  is  too  complex.  The  critic  accuses  him  of 
sentimentalism,  but  still  the  Concord  recluse 
defies  his  analysis.  Rousseau,  "many  ways  a 
complex  character,"  lies  beyond  him,  and  Carlyle 
equally,  of  whom  he  writes  in  1884:  "I  find  .  .  . 
him  more  problematic  than  ever."1  He  wrote 
on  Lessing  but  passed  by  Goethe,  whose  figure 
"is  grand,  is  rightfully  preeminent,"  but  who 
"to  make  a  study  .  .  .  would  soil  the  maiden 
petals  of  a  woman's  soul."2  He  has  "the  best 
possible  Swift  in  his  head,"  but  his  review  of 
Forster's  Swift  in  the  Nation  is  evidence  that  the 
great  Dean,  "generous  miser;  skeptical  believer; 
devout  scoffer;  tender-hearted  misanthrope,"3  lay 
quite  beyond  the  reach  of  the  critic's  psychological 
insight.  Sometimes  he  gives  up  in  frank  despair 
as  in  the  case  of  Rousseau.4  Again,  as  in  treat 
ing  of  Dante,  he  would  simplify  the  character  by 
denying  certain  phases  which  tended  to  make  it 
complex.  The  lover  of  Beatrice  never  gave  him 
self  up  to  the  gratification  of  sense ;  1^he  portray er  of 
Francesca  and  her  lover  could  not  be  vindictive. 
Even  in  treating  men  less  difficult,  it  has  been 
pointed  out  that  he  never  gets  to  the  radical 
explanation  of  their  qualities.5  He  always  leaves 
a  substratum  untouched,  whose  presence  he  may 

1  Letters,  ii.,  282.  2  Works,  ii.,  172;  194. 

3  Nation,  vol.  xxii;  April  13,  April  20,  1876. 

<  Works,  ii.,  262.  s  Vide  ante,  Chap.  V. 


i  So  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

at  times  have  guessed,  but  to  which  he  could  not 
penetrate.  One  begins  to  understand  why  Lowell 
did  not  attempt  the  method  of  Sainte-Beuve. 

Lowell's  essays,  studied  as  wholes,  betray  a 
weakness  which  shows  itself  in  many  ways.1 
He  once  attempted  a  novel  but  abandoned  it.  His 
comment  is  significant:  "As  for  the  novel,  in  the 
first  place  I  can't  write  one  nor  conceive  how  any 
one  else  can."  Consecuity  of  thought  was  not  a 
strong  point  with  Lowell.  Paragraphs  frequently 
follow  one  another  without  any  inter-relation  save 
that  of  dealing  with  the  same  author.  This  is 
sometimes  true  of  sentences  in  the  same  paragraph. 
The  following  is  typical  of  such  inconsecuity. 
Speaking  of  the  quarrel  between  Pope  and  Addison 
and  the  former's  explanation  of  the  cause,  Lowell 
says: 

Let  any  one  ask  himself  how  he  likes  an  author's 
emendations  of  any  poem  to  which  his  ear  had 
adapted  itself  in  its  former  shape,  and  he  will  hardly 
think  it  needful  to  charge  Addison  with  any  mean 
motive  for  his  conservatism  in  this  matter. 

The  next  sentence  runs:  "One  or  two  of  Pope's 
letters  are  so  good  as  to  make  us  regret  that  he 
did  not  oftener  don  the  dressing-gown  and  slippers 

1  One  is  reminded  of  Lowell's  own  words  in  another  connection: 
"The  essays  confuse  by  the  multiplicity  of  details  while  they 
weary  by  want  of  continuity."  Works,  iv.,  79. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  181 

in  his  correspondence.  One  in  particular,  to  Lord 
Burlington,  describing  a  journey,"1  etc.  He 
constantly  returns  in  his  studies  to  matters  he  has 
already  considered.  In  his  non-literary  essays,  he 
rambles  along,  finally  coming  not  to  a  conclusion 
but  to  a  stop.  His  literary  essays  have  much 
of  this  desultory  character.  The  butterflies  of 
chance  allusion  proved  irresistibly  alluring  and  he 
never  overcame  his  weakness  for  giving  chase  to 
them.  Opening  a  volume  at  random,  one  finds: 
"So  far  as  all  the  classicism  then  attainable  was 
concerned,  Shakespeare  got  it  as  cheap  as  Goethe 
did,  who  always  bought  it  ready-made."  Then 
follows  two-thirds  of  a  page  on  Goethe's  method 
of  obtaining  "ready-made  classicism."2  Again, 
after  discussing  Chaucer's  alleged  irregularities  of 
metre,  he  says :  "  Enough  and  more  than  enough  on 
a  question  about  which  it  is  ...  hard  to  be  pa 
tient."  But  he  cannot  be  content  and  pursues 
the  topic  for  nearly  three  pages  further.3 

It  is  beyond  doubt  that  some  of  the  blemishes 
of  Lowell's  essays  are  due  to  re-working  of  old  ma 
terial,  but  not  so  the  weaknesses  in  his  logic.  Dis 
cussing  the  question  whether  Rousseau  were  a 
self -deluded  poseur,  he  asks:  "Have  we  any  right 
to  judge  this  man  after  our  blunt  English  fash 
ion  ...?  Is  French  reality  precisely  our  reality? 

1  Works,  iv.,  53.  a  Ibid.,  iii.,  46. 

3  Ibid.,  iii.,  348.     Of  Lowell's  mind  one  recalls  Lamb's  words 

in  another  connection:  "Its  motion  is  circular, not  progressive." 


1 82  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

Could  we  tolerate  tragedy  in  rhymed  alexandrines, 
instead  of  blank  verse?"1  The  want  of  parity 
between  tolerating  a  pose  which  affects  even  the 
sphere  of  moral  action  and  tolerating  a  type  of 
verse,  is  obvious.  He  comes  to  the  defense  of 
Rousseau  by  attacking  those  who  had  borne  testi 
mony  against  him.  Even  though  Burke  were  a 
"snob,"2  Johnson  an  intimate  of  Savage,  and 
Moore  "the  ci  -devant  friend  of  the  Prince  Regent, " 
Rousseau,  one  would  think,  remained  no  better 
nor  worse  for  that.  In  discussing  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  Lowell  sets  out  to  examine  his  qualities, 
but  shifts  to  a  depiction  of  the  modern  English 
man.3  Doctor  Johnson  and  John  Bunyan,  after 
centuries  of  Norman  admixture,  are  not  Cynewulf 
and  ^Elfric.  Speaking  of  the  Elizabethan  drama 
tists,  he  says :  "  How  little  they  were  truly  dramatic 
seems  proved  by  the  fact  that  none,  or  next  to 
none,  of  their  plays  have  held  the  stage."4  It 
was  not  unfortunate  that  "seems"  provided  the 
critic  with  a  loophole  of  escape  from  the  strict 
implication  of  his  statement.  When  he  sums  up 
Pope,  the  question  at  issue  is  this :  Was  Pope  a  poet  ? 
Suddenly  in  Lowell's  resume  the  question  has 
become,  not  was  Pope  a  poet,  but  was  he  a  great 

1  Works,  ii.,  268. 

2 Ibid.,  ii.,  236.  Cf.  Letters,  u.,  421:  "The  only  feeling  ...  in 
my  memory  concerning  .  .  .  [De  Quincey]  is  that  he  was  a  kind 
of  inspired  cad."  3  Works,  iii.,  316. 

«  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  24. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  183 

poet  ?    The  implication  in  the  question  as  thus  put 
assumes  the  very  point  at  issue. I 

The  inexactness  of  Lowell's  thought  appears  at 
times  in  his  tendency  to  employ  a  word  in  some 
unexplained  signification  of  his  own  or  in  his 
limitation  of  it  to  his  own  definition.  He  tells 
us  that  Shakespeare's  method  "was  thoroughly 
Greek,"2  although  Greek  in  what  sense  he  fails  to 
say.  When  he  declares:  "A  rooted  discontent 
seems  always  to  underlie  all  great  poetry,  if  it  be 
not  even  the  motive  of  it, "  he  leaves  us  to  guess  at 
his  definition  of  " discontent"  or  to  go  back  to  his 
source  for  its  meaning.3  When  he  calls  Burke 
a  sentimentalist,  he  defines  the  term  to  mean  "a 
man  who  took  what  would  now  be  called  an  aes 
thetic  view  of  morals  and  politics. ' ' 4  Montaigne  he 
regards  as  "  really  the  first  great  modern  writer, " s 
"modern  writer"  meaning  "the  first  who  assimi 
lated  his  Greek  and  Latin,  and  showed  that  an 
author  might  be  original  and  charming,  even  classi 
cal,  if  he  did  not  try  too  hard. " s  Such  usage  of  a 
term  in  a  special  and  sometimes  undefined  signi 
fication  is  no  less  confusing  because  one  reads  in 
Lowell's  letters:  "It  fags  me  to  deal  with  particu- 

1  Said  Lowell  of  Dry  den:  He  "sees  .  .  .  that  a  man  who  under 
takes  to  write  should  first  have  a  meaning  perfectly  defined  to 
himself  and  then  should  be  able  to  set  it  forth  clearly  in  the  best 
words."  a  Works,  iii.,  92. 

3  Vide  Hazlitt's  Works,  v.,  3.  «  Works,  ii.,  233. 

s  Ibid.,  ii.,  221.  Cf.  "Dante  is  ...  the  founder  of  modern 
literature,"  ibid.,  iv.,  229. 


184  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

lars."  Such  a  declaration  is  a  confession,  not  a 
defense.  Speaking  of  Wordsworth,  Lowell  asks: 

How  much  of  his  poetry  is  likely  to  be  a  permanent 
possession?  The  answer  to  this  question  is  involved 
in  the  answer  to  a  question  of  wider  bearing, — What 
are  the  conditions  of  permanence?  Immediate  or 
contemporaneous  recognition  is  certainly  not  domi 
nant  among  them  .  .  .  Nor  can  mere  originality 
assure  the  interest  of  posterity  .  .  .  Since  Virgil 
there  have  been  at  most  but  four  cosmopolitan 
authors.  .  .  .  These  have  stood  the  supreme  test 
of  being  translated  into  all  tongues,  because  the 
large  humanity  of  their  theme,  and  of  their  handling 
of  it,  needed  translation  into  none. z 


The  matter  in  Lowell's  hands,  instead  of  being 
simplified,  becomes  steadily  more  complex.  We 
ask  again:  How  much  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  is 
likely  to  be  a  permanent  possession?  What  are 
we  to  understand  by  " permanent"?  Does  the 
critic  mean  cosmopolitan  permanence  or  national 
permanence?  On  the  meaning  of  the  latter  term 
depends  the  answer  to  the  original  question. 
Lowell  seems  for  a  moment  to  consider  the  bearing 
of  recognition  and  originality  upon  it,  suddenly 
shifts  the  point  from  national  to  cosmopolitan  per 
manence,  and  then  leaves  the  question  he  has 
raised  hanging  in  the  air  with  an  inadequate  answer 
1  Works,  vi.,  107  ff. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  185 

to  one  phase  of  it,  and  that  not  the  phase  which 
bears  on  the  case.1 

Akin  to  the  weakness  which  has  just  been  dis 
cussed,  is  the  critic's  lack  of  precision.  His 
tendency  to  grope  for  the  exact  expression  of  an 
idea  means  not  a  paucity  in  vocabulary  but  a 
vagueness  in  thought.  That  incisive  quality  of 
mind  which  seizes  upon  the  inevitable  word,  is 
evident  only  in  flashes.  Face  to  face  with  an  idea 
which  requires  precision  of  thought  and  consequent 
precision  of  phrase,  he  handles  it  in  the  large, 
expanding  or  shifting  it  till  its  nicety  is  destroyed. 2 
This  lack  of  precision  has  to  some  extent  already 
been  exemplified;  it  betrays  itself  in  Lowell's 
tendency  to  limit  a  word  to  a  peculiar  meaning  of 
his  own;  in  his  avoidance  of  a  definition  even 
though  such  omission  leaves  his  sentences  foggy 
or  meaningless;  in  his  shifting  of  the  point  of  dis 
cussion;  in  his  weakness  of  logic  and  inconsecuity 
of  thought.3  As  to  his  habit  of  enlargement  of 


1  This  opening  up  of  a  question  and  leaving  it  hanging  in  the 
air  is  common  with  Lowell;  e.  g.t  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  150, 
on  the  personal  equation.  This  paragraph  is  an  excellent  example 
of  Lowell's  inconsecuity  of  thought. 

3  For  an  excellent  example  of  Lowell's  weakness  in  close  reason 
ing  and  in  precision  of  thought  and  expression,  vide  Works,  iv., 
261,  "No  doubt  it  is  primarily,"  etc. 

3  "Without  clearness  and  terseness,"  says  Lowell,  "there 
can  be  no  good  writing  whether  in  prose  or  verse."  Works,  iv., 
55.  Again:  "  Precision  of  phrase  presupposes  lucidity  of  thought." 
Ibid.,  iv.,  55. 


1 86  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

phrase  and  shifting  of  the  exact  idea,  the  following 
is  typical: 

Bonstetten  tells  us  that  "every  sensation  in  Gray  was 
passionate,"  but  I  very  much  doubt  whether  he 
was  capable  of  that  sustained  passion  of  the  mind 
which  is  fed  by  a  prevailing  imagination  acting  on 
the  consciousness  of  great  powers. x 

One  cannot  fail  to  perceive  the  hiatus  between 
Bonstetten's  idea  and  the  idea  as  one  finds  it  in 
Lowell's  phrasing.  Speaking  of  Fielding  he  says : 
"His  imagination  was  of  that  secondary  order  .  .  . 
subdued  to  what  it  worked  in;  and  his  creative 
power  is  not  less  in  degree  than  that  of  more  purely 
ideal  artists,  but  was  different  in  kind,  or,  if  not,  is 
made  to  seem  so  by  the  more  vulgar  substance  in 
which  it  wrought."  The  attempt  at  shading  the 
thought  becomes  irksome  and  overnice  for  the 
critic  to  handle ;  he  engulfs  it  in  this  ample  phras 
ing:  "Certainly  Fielding's  genius  was  incapable  of 
that  ecstasy  of  conception  through  which  the  poetic 
imagination  seems  fused  into  a  molten  unity  with  its 
material,"  and  so  on.a  Aut  Ccesar  aut  nihil! 
This  phase  of  Lowell's  lack  of  precision  is  evident 
when  he  sets  one  writer  over  against  others  for  the 
comparison  of  style.  Writing  of  Milton's  blank 

1  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  16.     The  italics  are  mine. 

2  Works,  vi.,  55.     For  an  excellent  example  of  this  largeness 
of  phrase  carried  into  a  discussion,  which  in  turn  keeps  beside  the 
point,  vide  Old  English  Dramatists,  p.  79  ff. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  187 

verse,  with  its  " variety  of  pause"  and  "majestic 
harmony,"  he  says: 

Landor,  who,  like  Milton,  seems  to  have  thought 
in  Latin,  has  caught  somewhat  more  than  others 
of  the  dignity  of  his  gait,  but  without  his  length  of 
stride.  Wordsworth,  at  his  finest,  has  perhaps 
approached  it,  but  with  how  long  an  interval !  Bryant 
has  not  seldom  attained  to  its  serene  equanimity, 
but  never  emulates  its  pomp.  Keats  has  caught 
something  of  its  large  utterance,  but  altogether  fails 
of  its  nervous  severity  of  phrase. I 

In  the  hands  of  a  man  of  precision  of  mind,  this 
method  of  cross-comparison  may  have  certain 
advantages;  in  the  hands  of  Lowell  it  has  few  or 
none.  For  to  set  men  into  juxtaposition  who  offer 
only  imperfect  grounds  for  comparison  is  to  run 
the  risk  of  giving  a  false  impression  of  both  unless 
the  treatment  is  of  the  nicest.  To  this  same  lack 
of  precision  of  mind  must  be  traced  his  betrayal 
into  superlatives,  although  the  immediate  causes 
of  that  betrayal  were  his  over-enthusiasm  and 
perhaps  a  well-grounded  suspicion  .that  the  prin 
ciples  adduced  to  support  his  conclusions  were 
inadequate. 

Further  light  on  Lowell's  type  of  mind  is  not 
wanting.  His  conceptions  of  matters  at  all 
abstract  were  vague,  and  his  application  of  what 

1  Works,  iv.,  86.  Cf.  ibid.,  ii.,  114;  iii.,  129  ff.  Latest  Literary 
Essays,  p.  4. 


1 88  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

he  regarded  as  fundamental  ideas  broke  down  in 
the  face  of  varying  conditions.  He  defines  form 
as  "the  artistic  sense  of  decorum  controlling  the 
coordination  of  parts  and  ensuring  their  harmoni 
ous  subservience  to  a  common  end."1  Style  is 
something  different,  "a  lower  form  of  the  same 
faculty  or  quality  whichever  it  be";  it  "has  to 
do  with  the  perfection  of  the  parts  themselves."2 
He  is  uncertain  whether  style  is  a  faculty  or  a 
quality;  but  imagination  "is  the  faculty  that 
shapes,  gives  unity  of  design  and  balanced  gravi 
tation  of  parts. "'  Rhythm  "shapes  both  matter 
and  manner  to  harmonious  proportion . " 4  "  Reach 
of  mind  .  .  .  selects,  arranges,  combines,  rejects, 
denies  itself  the  cheap  triumph  of  immediate 
effects,  because  it  is  absorbed  by  the  controlling 
charm  of  proportion  and  unity."5  Taste  is  "a 
true  sense  of  proportion."6  Style  again  "con 
sists  mainly  in  the  absence  of  undue  emphasis  and 
exaggeration. " 7  Again  it  is  "that  exquisite  some 
thing  .  .  .  which  .  .  .  makes  itself  felt  by  the 
skill  with  which  it  effaces  itself,  and  masters  us  at 
last  with  a  sense  of  indefinable  completeness."8 
Again  it  is  "the  establishment  of  a  perfect  mutual 
understanding  between  the  worker  and  his  ma- 

1    Precision,    says    Lowell,    comes   of   insight.     Old    English 
Dramatists,  page  56. 

a  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  144. 

3  Works,  iii.,  30.  «  Ibid.,  ii.,  117.  s  Ibid.,  iii.,  332. 

6  Ibid.,  iii.,  317.  7  Ibid.,  iii.,  353.  « Ibid.,  iii.,  31. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  189 

terial.  "*  Such  a  confusing  medley  of  meanings 
suggests  Lowell's  inability  to  get  at  the  ultimate 
and  his  consequent  weakness  for  improvising 
definitions  to  fit  any  particular  case  which  might 
arise. 

In  Shakespeare,  Lowell  attempts  to  work  out 
the  Tempest  as  an  allegory :  Prospero  is  the  Imagi 
nation,  Ariel  is  the  Fancy,  Caliban  is  "the  brute 
Understanding, "  who,  "the  moment  his  poor  wits 
are  warmed  with  the  glorious  liquor  of  Stephano, 
plots  rebellion  against  his  natural  lord,  the  higher 
Reason."  Miranda  is  "abstract  Womanhood"; 
"Ferdinand  is  Youth."  His  allegory  gets  no  fur 
ther.  One  may  suspect  that  the  difficulty  of 
accounting  for  Womanhood  as  the  daughter  of 
Imagination,  of  identifying  the  higher  Reason 
with  the  Imagination,  and  the  like,  may  have 
baffled  him.  His  inconsistencies  and  contradic 
tions,  indeed,  are  constantly  occurring;  the  reason 
is  the  same.  His  notions  about  Nature  and  the 
interactions  of  sympathy  between  her  and  man  are 
vague  and  contradictory.  He  points  out  as  a 
weakness  in  others  an  attitude  of  mind  which  he 
confesses  to  in  himself.2  He  adopts  Carlyle's 
famous  definition  of  history3  only  to  deny  its 
soundness. 4  And  so  one  might  go  on. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  a  funda- 

1  Works,  iii.,  37  ff. 

2  Cf.  Works,  ii.,  266;  i.,  376;  Letters,  ii.,  66,  424;  ibid.,  i.,  366. 

3  Ibid.,  vi.,  91 ;  ii.,  284.  4  Ibid.,  ii.,  99. 


190  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

mental  idea  of  Lowell's  was  that  of  moral  character 
as  a  necessity  for  a  great  poet;  that  this  idea 
expanded  till  he  declared  character  to  be  "the 
only  soil  in  which  real  mental  power  can  root 
itself  and  find  sustenance."1  But  difficulties 
beset  him.  What  of  Goethe  and  Burns  and  Byron 
and  Rousseau,  to  name  no  others?  He  answers: 
"  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Burns, — what  have  their 
biographies  to  do  with  us?  Genius  is  not  a  ques 
tion  of  character.  "2  The  man  and  the  genius  are 
different  beings.3  "We  forgive  everything  to  the 
genius;  we  are  inexorable  to  the  man."2  For 
"There  is  nothing  so  true,  so  sincere,  so  down 
right  and  forthright,  as  genius.  It  is  always  truer 
than  the  man  himself  is,  greater  than  he. " 4  What 
becomes  of  character  as  the  only  soil  in  which 
real  mental  power  can  root  itself  and  find  suste 
nance?  What  becomes  of  the  critic's  declaration 
that  "for  good  or  evil,  the  character  and  its 
intellectual  product  are  inextricably  interfused?"5 
Rousseau  the  man,  he  insists,  is  not  to  be  consid 
ered  in  connection  with  Rousseau  the  genius.6 
But  soon  the  critic  changes  his  mind;  we  are 
justified  in  examining  Rousseau's  character,  for  he 

1  Works,  ii.,  195.  *Ibid.t  ii.,  241. 

3  "The  poet  and  the  man  are  two  different  natures;  though 
they  exist  together,  they  may  be  unconscious  of  each  other, 
and  be  incapable  of  deciding  on  each  other's  powers  and  efforts 
by  any  reflex  act. "  Letter  of  Shelley  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gisborne, 
July  19,  1821.  4  Lowell's  Works,  ii.,  244. 

s  Ibid.,  iii.,  271.  6  Ibid.,  ii.,  240  ff. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  191 

is  a  professed  moralist. I  Then  we  shall  not  forgive 
everything  to  the  genius?  No,  answers  the  critic, 
for  in  natures  incapable  of  escaping  from  them 
selves,  "the  author  is  inevitably  mixed  with  his 
work,  and  we  have  a  feeling  that  the  amount  of  his 
sterling  character  is  the  security  for  the  notes  he 
issues."2  Then  genius  may  be  a  question  of 
character?  Yes,  answers  the  critic,  except  in  the 
single  case  of  the  "highest  creative  genius  .  .  , 
for  there  the  thing  produced  is  altogether  dis 
engaged  from  the  producer."2  Who  is  to  be 
numbered  among  the  highest  creative  geniuses? 
We  are  not  told.  Let  it  be  assumed  that  Shake 
speare  is  one  of  that  high  company;  let  it  be  as 
sumed  either  that  character  is  the  only  soil  in  which 
real  mental  power  can  root  itself  and  find  suste 
nance,  or  that  character  is  quite  apart  from  genius. 
What  of  Shakespeare  then?  The  critic  rates  the 
poet's  genius  so  high  as  to  make  it  a  confirmation 
of  a  creative  Deity,3  but  rates  his  character 
"higher  even  than  .  .  .  [his]  genius."4  Perhaps 
after  all  the  critic  was  right  when  he  suggested 
that  character  was  a  nobler  form  of  genius. 5  But 
one  remembers  that  genius  is  "always  truer  than 
the  man  himself  is,  greater  than  he. " 6  How  does 
the  critic  support  this  last  assertion?  By  demand 
ing  to  know  whether  Shakespeare's  contemporaries 
would  have  "left  us  so  wholly  without  record  of 

1  Works,  ii.,  241  and  243.        a  Ibid.,  ii.,  257.       3  Ibid.,  iii.,  93. 
<  Ibid.,  iii.,  94.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  171.  6  Ibid.,  ii.,  244. 


192  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

him  as  they  have  done, "  if  he  as  a  man  "had  been 
as  marvellous  a  creature  as  the  genius  that  wrote 
his  plays?"1  Nine  months  later  Lowell  has 
changed  his  mind  and  reversed  the  answer  to  his 
own  question.2  What  was  before  a  reason  for 
depreciating  Shakespeare's  character  becomes  a 
reason  for  exalting  it.  Shakespeare,  says  Lowell, 
was  wonderfully  exceptional  because  of  "his 
utterly  unimpeachable  judgment,  and  that  poise 
of  character  which  enabled  him  to  be  at  once  the 
greatest  of  poets  and  so  unnoticeable  a  good  citizen 
as  to  leave  no  incidents  for  biography."3  But 
why  go  on?  In  small  as  in  great  things  it  is  the 
same:  vagueness  of  thought,  largeness  of  expres 
sion,  failure  to  meet  a  difficulty  fairly,  weakness  for 
avoiding  or  shifting  or  missing  the  point  at  issue, 
inability  to  answer  difficulties  without  raising  new 
contradictions,  the  contradictions  left  unrecon 
ciled  because  unreconcilable  except  to  a  philo 
sophic  mind.  To  say  that  Lowell  never  took  the 
trouble  to  bring  his  contradictory  statements  into 
harmony  is  to  assume  the  real  point,  which  is :  Was 
it  possible  for  Lowell  to  bring  his  contradictions — 
when  they  went  at  all  deep — into  harmony?  The 

1  Works,  ii.,  244. 

2  In  Shakespeare,  in  North  American  Review,  April,  1868. 

3  Works,  iii.,  92.     For  a  typical  example  of  Lowell's  vagueness 
of  thought  and  expression,  vide  Works,  iv.,  261,  "No  doubt  it  is 
primarily, "  etc.     Cf.  Letters,  i.,  357:  "You  see  what  I  mean — or, 
at  any  rate,  that  I  have  a  meaning,  which  is  the  main  thing. " 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  193 

unity  which  lies  at  the  root  of  variety  was  precisely 
what  presented  difficulties  to  Lowell.  It  was 
pointed  out  earlier  that  his  enthusiasm  led  him  to 
express  views  on  character  and  genius  which 
tended  to  exalt  that  author  who  was  the  subject 
of  his  immediate  study.  Lowell's  enthusiasm 
v/ould  never  have  been  allowed  so  to  dominate 
him,  had  he  possessed  philosophic  depth  of  mind. 

One  begins  to  understand  why  the  law,  with  its 
demands  of  penetration  to  basic  principles,  of 
exactness  in  conception  and  expression,  of  con- 
secuity  of  thought  and  of  logical  reasoning,  should 
not  have  appealed  to  Lowell.  Small  wonder  that 
he  wrote:  It  is  a  calling  " which  I  hate  and  for 
which  I  am  not  well  fitted  to  say  the  least. "  * 

Such  comments  as  this  upon  himselt  are  frequent 
in  Lowell.  It  would  be  to  demand  of  him  that 
quality  of  mind  which  he  did  not  possess  were  one 
to  expect  him  to  suggest  the  ultimate  source  of  his 
own  weaknesses.  Many  of  these  weaknesses  he 
saw  in  other  writers.2  What  he  says  of  himself 
has  a  particular  interest ;  it  points  the  way  to  a  con 
firmation  of  our  contention.  Here  is  the  man  of 
feeling,  whose  early  conceptions  of  a  work  to  be 

1  Letters,  i.,  66. 

2  For  example,  he  says  of  Milton :  "  He  was  far  more  rhetorician 
than  thinker."     (Works,  iv.,  84.)     Of  Richter:  "Delightful  as 
Jean  Paul's  humor  is,  how  much  more  so  would  it  be  if  he  only 
knew  when  to  stop."     Lowell  did  not  take  kindly  to  criticism 
from  others.     Cf.   Letters,    i.,    121;   ibid.,  ii.,  65   ff.;     Howells, 
Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance,  p.  224. 


194  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

written  are  vague  and  luminous  in  the  warm  haze 
of  first  imaginings:  "The  germ  of  a  poem  ...  is 
always  delightful  to  me,  but  I  have  no  pleasure  in 
working  it  up. " J  Here  is  the  man  of  feeling  again : 
"  One  of  my  great  defects  ...  is  an  impatience  of 
mind  which  makes  me  contemptuously  indifferent 
about  arguing  matters  that  have  once  become 
convictions."1  One  gets  new  light  on  this  impa 
tience  of  mind  if  one  recalls  another  admission  of 
Lowell's,  "It  fags  me  to  deal  with  particulars. " 2 
There  is  the  man  of  feeling  again,  whose  ideas  are 
in  the  large,  because  the  result  of  impression,  and 
never  crystallized  by  contact  with  the  touchstone 
of  ultimate  principles.  It  is  worth  while  to  lis 
ten  to  these  self -revelations ;  they  help  to  establish 
our  contention.  Lowell  says  in  one  of  his  letters : 
"  I  must  see  the  full  face  [of  truth]  and  then  the  two 
sides  have  such  different  expressions  that  I  begin 
to  doubt  which  is  the  sincere  and  cannot  surrender 
myself. " 3  In  the  Cathedral,  he  speaks  of  those 

"Who  see  two  sides,  with  our  posed  selves  debate." 

How  often  the  "two  sides"  belonged  to  one  and 
the  same  truth,  if  only  he  had  been  able  to  per 
ceive  it!  That  "  uniformity  in  variety,"  which,  as 
Professor  Beers  says,  "it  is  for  .  .  .  the  philoso 
pher  to  detect,"4  lay  beyond  Lowell's  powers  to 

1  Letters,  ii.,  10.  *  Ibid.,  i.,  134. 

»  Ibid.,  ii.,  280.  4  Points  at  Issue,  p.  1 15. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  195 

perceive.     He  never  seems  to  have  realized  the 
significance  of  this  weakness. 

He  wrote  in  1875 :  "  I  am  one  of  the  last  ...  of 
the  great  readers,"  and  he  confesses  to  being 
''rather  an  unwilling  writer. "  *  With  all  his  wide 
reading,  how  much  real  thinking  did  Lowell  do? 
Did  he  have  his  eyes  turned  inward  upon  himself 
when  he  wrote:  "It  is  curious  .  .  .  how  tyranni 
cal  the  habit  of  reading  is,  and  what  shifts  we  make 
to  escape  thinking.  There  is  no  bore  we  dread 
being  left  alone  with  so  much  as  our  own  minds." 2 
Did  he  find  his  own  mind  a  bore  with  which  he 
dreaded  to  be  left  alone?  He  writes  in  a  letter  of 
December,  1884:  "  Every  now  and  then  my  good 
spirits  carry  me  away  and  people  find  me  amusing, 
but  reaction  always  sets  in  the  moment  I  am 
left  to  myself."3  We  are  not  without  illumi 
nating  commentaries  on  this.  Fifteen  months 
later,  writing  of  Gray,4  he  says:  "He  was  cheerful 
...  in  any  company  but  his  own,  and  this,  it 
may  be  guessed,  because  faculties  were  called  into 
play  which  he  had  not  the  innate  force  to  rouse 
into  more  profitable  activity. "  To'  what  was  due 
this  lack  of  innate  force?  Lowell  answers,  indo 
lence,  "intellectual  indolence."  One  need  not 
stop  to  consider  whether  or  not  Lowell's  diag 
nosis  of  Gray  is  sound.  One's  interest  in  it  is 

1  Letters,  ii.,  154.  a  Works,  i.,  21.  3  Letters,  ii.,  289. 

*  New  Princeton  Review  for  March,  1886,  now  in  Latest  Liter 
ary  Essays. 


196  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

keen,  not  for  what  it  tries  to  tell  us  about  Gray, 
but  for  what  it  actually  does  tell  us  about  Lowell. 
Beyond  doubt  the  critic  thought  he  read  in  the  poet 
symptoms  which  he  found  in  himself.  He  dis 
covers  that  Gray  like  himself  is  cheerful  only  in 
company;  he  decides  that  Gray's  "constant  en 
deavor  was  to  occupy  himself  in  whatever  would 
save  him  from  the  reflection  of  how  he  might 
occupy  himself  better."  Was  it  for  a  similar 
reason  that  Lowell  read  omnivorously,  but  wrote 
unwillingly?  *  Was  he  eager  to  escape  what  would 
demand  thought?  "I  always  write  my  longest 
letters,"  he  says,  "when  I  have  something  else  to 
do.  //  seems  so  like  being  industrious. "  2  Howells 
tells  us:  "Lowell  liked  to  have  some  one  help 
him  idle  the  time  away  and  keep  him  as  long  as 
possible  from  his  work."  The  critic  offers  in 
explanation  of  Gray  the  weakness  which  he  thinks 
explains  himself.  He  writes:  "I  have  never  been 
able  to  shake  off  the  indolence  (I  do  not  know 
whether  to  call  it  intellectual  or  physical)  that  I 
inherited  from  my  father."3  One  does  not  find 
that  physical  indolence  is  the  term  to  apply  to  this 
man  Lowell  who  enjoys  the  experiences  of  the 
Moosehead  Journal,  who  likes  frequent  and  long 
tramps  in  the  open,  who  goes  on  vacation  trips  to 

1  Cf.  Letters,  ii.,  154. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.,  346.     The  italics  are  mine.     Cf.  Latest  Literary 
Essays,  p.  20:  Lowell  was  thinking  of  himself  when  he  wrote: 
"Nobody  knew  better  than  Johnson  what  a  master  of  casuistry, 
is  indolence. "  3  Letters,  ii.,  280. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  197 

the  Adirondacks  and  finds  delight  in  the  free  life 
of  the  woods.  Lowell  gives  us  the  key  to  the 
answer  in  his  own  case  when  he  expresses  the 
belief  that  Gray's  indolence  was  intellectual.  He 
finds  that  Gray  was  melancholy  in  his  own  com 
pany  just  as  he  was  himself. x  And  why ?  ' '  Gray's 
melancholy  was  that  of  Richard  II. :— 

"I  wasted  time,  and  now  doth  time  waste  me, 
For  now  hath  time  made  me  his  numbering  clock." 

Here  again  Lowell  thinks  he  finds  in  Gray  the 
same  symptoms  as  in  his  own  case  and  suggests  a 
similar  explanation, — something  akin  to  remorse. 
"I  have  thrown  away  hours  enough  to  make  a 
handsome  reputation  out  of,"  Lowell  wrote  in 
1876.  Again  he  speaks  of  the  time  when  "I  am 
in  Mount  Auburn,  with  so  much  undone  that 
I  might  have  done."2  And  still  again:  "I  feel 
that  my  life  has  been  mainly  wasted — that  I  have 
thrown  away  more  than  most  men  ever  had," 
but  he  was  never  able,  he  says,  to  shake  off  indo 
lence.  Thus  one  gets  back  to  indolence  again;  but 
one  is  not  in  the  throes  of  a  vicious1  circle ;  the  ex 
planation  is  not  far  to  seek.  Lowell  was  a  man  of 
feeling,  not  a  man  of  thought ;  he  read  enormously 
and  found  in  reading  a  threefold  satisfaction:  his 
impressionism  was  sated;  thought  was  cheated 
into  a  semblance  of  real  activity  by  following  the 
course  of  another's  mind ;  it  seemed,  to  use  his  own 

1  Letters,  ii.,  289.  *  Ibid.,  ii.,  215. 


198  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

words  in  another  connection,  "so  much  like  being 
industrious."  Conceptions  of  poems  and  essays 
fell  short  in  the  reality.1  He  came  to  realize 
that  something  was  lacking  in  his  work.  And 
with  the  passing  years  was  born  a  dissatisfaction, 
not  alone,  one  may  believe,  with  the  amount  of  his 
writings,  for  the  amount  was  not  small.  He 
"has  lived  so  long  and  done  so  little.  "2  His  feel 
ing  of  dissatisfaction  with  his  life  and  of  something 
akin  to  remorse  for  his  supposed  sins  of  omission 
sprang  not  from  a  moment's  mood  of  depression, 
but  from  the  consciousness  of  a  fatal  defect  in  him 
self  which  robbed  his  accomplishment  of  its  best 
vitality.  It  was  characteristic  of  Lowell  that  in 
tracing  this  defect  he  got  no  further  than  his 
indolence,  one  may  say  his  intellectual  indolence. 
An  outgrowth  of  that  infirmity  was  doubtless  the 
dependence  on  stimuli  outside  of  himself  which 
was  so  marked  in  Lowell's  case  and  which  has 

1  "The  conception  of  the  verses  [The  Flying  Dutchman]  is 
good;  the  verses  are  bad  ...  As  for  putting  back  what  was 
in  the  first  copy — the  said  first  copy  went  up  my  chimney  Sunday 
afternoon,  as  airy  and  sparkling  a  poem  as  I  meant  it  to  be  when 
it  came  first  into  my  head.  If  I  could  recover  it  with  the  fervor  of 
the  flame  and  the  grace  of  the  smoke  still  in  it !  That's  the  kind 
of  thing  we  dream  of — the  copy  you  have  is  the  kind  of  thing  we 
do. "  Letters,  i.,  397  ff.  Cf.  ibid.,  i.,  345  ff ;  ii.,  10.  " '  I  have  the 
best  possible  Swift  in  my  head  if  I  could  only  get  him  out.'  .  .  . 
Apparently  he  had  planned  a  paper  on  Swift  of  the  proportions  of 
one  of  his  North  American  articles;  what  actually  appeared  was  a 
brief  review  of  Forster's  Life  of  Swift  in  the  Nation."  Scudder,  ii., 
198.  Cf.  Letters,  ii.,  166  ff.  3  Letters,  ii.,  367. 


LOWELL'S  TYPE  OF  MIND  199 

already  been  discussed.  But  to  say  that  the  secret 
of  the  critic's  shortcomings  is  found  in  intellectual 
indolence,  is  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  the  real  signifi 
cance  of  the  weaknesses  which  have  already  been 
pointed  out;  it  is,  in  a  word,  to  stop  short  of  the 
fundamental  explanation.  ' '  All  thought  is  sad, ' ' * 
said  Lowell,  and  in  so  far  as  he  spoke  for  himself 
he  was  right.  It  is  sad  when  it  is  something  we 
make  shift  to  escape  from ;  it  is  sad  when  it  brings 
us  no  nearer  a  radical  truth  than  its  seemingly 
contradictory  facets;  it  is  sad  finally  to  that  man 
with  whom  penetration  is  an  occasional  moment's 
flash  of  insight  and  not  a  quality  of  mind.  Be 
hind  Lowell's  intellectual  indolence  lay  his  real 
weakness:  lack  of  philosophic  depth  of  m 
To  that  lack  is  to  be  attributed  the  absence  of 
genuine  vitality  in  his  critical  essays.  Remember 
ing  this,  we  find  that  Lowell's  feelings  of  a  wasted 
life  are  explicable.  It  is  fair  to  believe  that  he 
suspected,  perhaps  even  realized,  that  he  had 
failed  to  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  his  subject; 
that  his  work  in  consequence,  when  judged  by 
what  he  had  hoped  to  achieve  and' by  the  criticism 
of  admitted  masters,  was  tried  and  found  wanting. 
What  he  did  not  realize,  perhaps  not  even  suspect, 
was  that  the  deficiency  of  his  essays  had  root  in  a 
deficiency  of  his  type  of  mind.  An  examination 
of  Lowell's  critical  method  will  not  contradict 
this  contention. 

1  Poetical  Works,  iv.,  61. 


CHAPTER  VII 
LOWELL:  THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM 

OWELL'S  early  critical  works  have  already 
*-*     been   discussed.     They   are   worth   bearing 
in  mind  as  eminently  characteristic  of  the  mature 
Lowell.     They    are    discursive,    generally    vague 
when  the  question  at  issue  becomes  abstruse,  and 
abound  in  purple  patches.     The  qualities  of  the 
poets  discussed  are  set  down  without  any  endeavor 
to  mark  their  inter-relation  or  to  trace  them  back 
to  any  radical  characteristic.     Poems  are  regarded 
from  the  standpoint  of  their  effect  on  the  reader, 
and  that  effect  is  translated  into  figurative  lan 
guage.     In  his  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  Lowell 
followed   the   same  method.     He  translated  his 
impressions  into  simile  and  metaphor.     He  never 
got  at  the  ultimate  answer  to  a  difficult  question. 
In  his  first  lecture  he  said:   "The  lecturer  on 
science  has  only  to  show  how  much  he  knows — the 
lecturer  on  poetry  can  only  be  sure  how  much  he 
feels."     Here  is  the   secret   of   Lowell's   critical 
method.     However  uncertain  he  might  be  about 
penetrating  to  ultimate  principles,  he  was  sure  of 

200 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     201 

the  feelings  which  a  poem  aroused  in  him.  His 
method  in  consequence  was  essentially  subjective, 
because,  after  all,  only  a  matter  of  impression. 
When  he  pointed  out  the  various  qualities  of  an 
author,  he  was  still  making  use  of  his  impressions, 
as  in  that  clever  jeu  d' esprit,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 
Such  a  work  as  the  Fable  was  peculiarly  suitable 
to  a  man  of  Lowell's  type  of  mind.  For  in  it  he 
was  not  restrained  by  that  conservatism  which 
was  bound  to  accept  a  classic  with  deference,  nor 
by  those  particulars  with  which  it  fagged  him  to 
deal,  nor  by  the  necessity  of  appealing  to  the 
principles  of  judgment  in  literature.  He  could 
give  a  brilliant  exhibition  of  critical  pyrotechnics, 
and  he  did.  But  critical  pyrotechnics  is  not 
criticism.  Lowell  came  to  realize  this  and  in  his 
Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  he  tried  to  be  better 
than  his  creed.  For  he  did  not  altogether  content 
himself  with  his  impressions  about  poets  and  their 
poetry.  His  attempts  at  penetrating  to  ultimate 
principles  were  hardly  successful  or  satisfying,1 
but  they  showed  a  tendency  in  the  right  direction. 
Lowell  was  coming  to  realize  that  criticism,  to 
possess  vitality,  must  go  deeper  than  the  mere 
impressions  of  the  critic. 

By  the  time  he  came  to  maturity  in  his  critical 
essays,  he  could  write : 

Unless  we  admit  certain  principles  as  fixed  beyond 
1  E.g.,  chap,  i.,  called  Definitions. 


202  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

question,  we  shall  be  able  to  render  no  adequate 
judgment,  but  only  to  record  our  impressions,  which 
may  be  valuable  or  not,  according  to  the  greater  or 
less  ductility  of  the  senses  on  which  they  are  made. x 

This  need  not  lead  one  astray;  Lowell  remained 
an  impressionist.  He  reads  a  work  through, 
making  marginal  notes  as  he  goes  along,  realizes 
a  total  impression  and  then  sets  to  work.  In  his 
typical  essays  he  presents  this  total  impression, 
then  the  tale  of  his  author's  separate  qualities, 
then  his  total  impression  again  as  a  summary. 
This  procedure  explains  in  some  degree  the  fre 
quent  inconsequence  of  his  summary,  which 
rarely  is  warranted  in  any  strict  sense  by  the  array 
of  qualities  adduced.  He  is  not  blind  to  this 
himself.  He  reads  Dryden,  gets  his  total  impres 
sion,  which  as  usual  seems  broader  than  the  aggre 
gation  of  qualities  would  warrant,  and  confesses: 
"You.  feel  that  the  whole  of  him  was  better  than 
any  random  specimens,  though  of  his  best,  seem 
to  prove."2  He  tries  hard  to  give  warrant  to  his 
general  impression,  but  finally  contents  himself 
with  an  emphatic  reaffirmation  of  it.  "It  is 
hard,"  he  says  in  Gray,  "to  justify  a  general 
impression  by  conclusive  examples.  Two  in 
stances  will  serve  to  point  my  meaning,  if  not 
wholly  to  justify  my  generalization."3  His  atti- 

1  Works,  Hi.,  29,  written  in  1868. 

2  Ibid.,  in.,  103.     The  italics  are  mine. 
a  Latest  Literary  Essays,  p.  4. 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     203 

tude  as  an  impressionist  is  evident  in  occa 
sional  statements  of  his  own :  He  has  "read  through 
his  (Thoreau's)  six  volumes  in  the  order  of  their 
production."  He  continues:  "I  shall  try  to  give 
an  adequate  report  of  their  impression  upon  me 
both  as  critic  and  as  mere  reader.111  In  his  sum 
mary  of  Spenser  he  quotes  three  of  the  poet's 
striking  lines,  prefacing  his  selection  by  the  state 
ment  that  they  "best  characterize  the  feeling  his 
poetry  gives  us."2 

Not  being  content  merely  with  appreciation, 
Lowell,  as  has  been  suggested,  made  various 
endeavors  to  go  deeper ;  it  was  when  he  attempted 
"to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  him" 
that  his  failure  was  most  marked.  His  inability 
to  handle  at  all  adequately  difficult  or  abstract 
questions  has  already  been  referred  to.  They 
bear  out  the  point  that  Lowell  was  a  man  of  feeling 
rather  than  of  thought.  For  they  retreat  from 
the  definite  and  specific  and  concrete  into  the 
large  and  figurative  and  vague.  Speaking  of 
Shakespeare,  to  cite  here  but  one  new  example, 
Lowell  says:  His  "moral  is  the  moral  of  worldly 
wisdom  only  heightened  to  the  level  of  his  wide- 
viewing  mind,  and  made  typical  by  the  dramatic 

1  Works,  i.,  369.     The  italics  are  mine. 

a  Ibid.,  iv.,  352.  The  italics  are  mine.  Cf.  "In  gathering  up 
the  impressions  made  upon  us  by  Mr.  Masson's  work,"  etc. 
(Works,  iv.,  86);  also  "I  find  a  confirmation  of  this  feeling  about 
Dryden,"  etc.  (Works,  Hi.,  123). 


204  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

energy  of  his  plastic  nature."1  One  is  tempted 
to  say  of  this  as  De  Quincey  said  of  Pope:  His 
" language  does  not  realize  the  idea;  it  simply 
suggests  or  hints  it."  The  following  passage, 
though  rather  lengthy,  is  worth  quoting.  It  is  typi 
cal  and  will  repay  analysis  as  indicative  of  several 
weaknesses  in  Lowell  which  have  already  been 
discussed.  He  has  used  the  phrase  "imaginative 
unity, "  and  now  says: 

The  true  ideal  is  not  opposed  to  the  real,  nor  is  it 
any  artificial  heightening  thereof,  but  lies  in  it,  and 
blessed  are  the  eyes  that  find  it!  It  is  the  mens 
divinior  which  hides  within  the  actual,  transfigur 
ing  matter-of-fact  into  matter-of-meaning  for  him 
who  has  the  gift  of  second-sight.  In  this  sense 
Hogarth  is  often  more  truly  ideal  than  Raphael, 
Shakespeare  often  more  truly  so  than  the  Greeks.  I 
think  it  is  a  more  or  less  conscious  perception  of  this 
ideality,  as  it  is  a  more  or  less  well-grounded  persua 
sion  of  it  as  respects  the  Greeks,  that  assures  to  him 
as  to  them,  and  with  equal  justice,  a  permanent  su 
premacy  over  the  minds  of  men.  This  gives  to  his 
characters  their  universality,  to  his  thought  its  irradi 
ating  property,  while  the  artistic  purpose  running 
through  and  combining  the  endless  variety  of  scene 
and  character  will  alone  account  for  his  power  of 
dramatic  effect.2 

How  far  does  all  this  penetrate  through  the 

1  Works,  iil.,  324. 

2  Ibid.,  iii.,  66.     Cf.  also  ibid.t  ii.,  79,  99;  iv.,  284;  iii.,  92,  etc. 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     205 

mist  of  words  into  the  realm  of  ideas?  To  use 
Matthew  Arnold's  words  in  another  connection, 
they  "carry  us  really  not  a  step  farther  than  the 
proposition  which  they  would  interpret."  It  is 
not  easy  to  bring  oneself  to  examine  such  passages 
of  Lowell  from  a  coldly  analytic  point  of  view. 
He  has  such  a  generous  flow  of  language  that  one 
is  inclined  to  accept  his  words  as  surcharged  with 
meaning.  On  submitting  them  to  examination 
one  seems  to  hear  him  say,  "  You  see  what  I  mean 
—-or,  at  any  rate,  that  I  have  a  meaning,  which  is 
the  main  thing."  De  Quincey's  words  on  Pope 
come  to  mind  again,  "His  language  does  not 
realize  the  idea."  This  is  but  another  phase  of 
that  weakness  which  runs  through  all  Lowell's 
critical  essays  and  which  "keeps  him  amid  sym 
bolism  and  illusion  and  the  fringes  of  things." 
We  face  here  the  same  question  which  constantly 
confronts  us:  What  was  this  weakness?  And 
always  one  answer  remains. 

In  saying  that  Lowell  was  an  impressionist,  one 
need  not  deny  that  he  had  certain  definite  ideas 
about  poetry.  Three  he  adhered  to  :l  poetry  must 
be  interesting1;  it  must  possess  the  power  of 
imaginative  appeal2;  it  must  have  finish  of  ex 
pression  or  verbal  style.3  So  far  as  Lowell 

1  Works,  ii.,  142.  Cf.  also  ibid.,  ii.,  134;  Old  English  Dramatists, 
pp.  19  and  20.  2  Cf.  Ibid.,  iii.,  31,  32,  35;  iv.,  267. 

*  Cf.  Ibid.,  iii.,  15,  46,  335;  iv.,  308;  vi.,  107;  Old  English 
Dramatists,  p.  106. 


206  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

applied  these  criteria  at  all,  it  was  with  no  cer 
tainty  of  method.  Merope  is  impossible  because 
dull.1  Most  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  will  perish 
because  it  lacks  style. 2  No  poetry  possesses  true 
vitality  which  does  not  "leap  throbbing  at  touch 
of  that  shaping  faculty,  the  imagination."3  For 
the  most  part,  however,  Lowell  relies  upon  the 
soundness  of  his  impression  to  assure  him  that  a 
work  is  excellent.  That  impression  he  then  casts 
about  to  justify.  That  this  is  his  procedure  is 
evident  in  general  from  a  study  of  his  essays  and 
in  particular  from  his  tendency  to  shift  his  em 
phasis  from  one  poetical  quality  to  another.  In 
his  essay  on  Spenser,  the  " epicure  of  language," 
he  emphasizes  diction  to  the  point  where  he  con 
fesses  that  he  lays  himself  open  to  the  charge  of 
over-stressing  this  single  attribute.4  In  his  essay 
on  Shakespeare  whose  "imagination  is  wonderful" 
he  declares  that  the  "power  of  expression  is  sub 
sidiary,  and  goes  only  a  little  way  toward  the 
making  of  a  great  poet.  "s  Calderon,  he  declares, 
is  "one  of  the  most  marvellous  of  poets,"6  indeed 
"a  greater  poet  than  Goethe,  "7  but  yet  he  cannot 

1  Works,  ii.,  134.  2  Ibid.,  iii.,  35.  3  Ibid.,  iv.,  267. 

<  Ibid.,  iv.,  308.  Cf.  also  iii.,  335;  vi.,  107;  Old  English  Drama 
tists,  p.  106.  s  Works,  iii.,  31. 

6  Letters,  ii.,  149.  "I  find  a  striking  similarity  between  Faust, 
and  this  drama  (Magico  Prodigioso) ,  and  if  I  were  to  acknowledge 
Coleridge's  distinction,  should  say  Goethe  was  the  greatest  phi 
losopher  and  Calderon  the  greatest  poet."  Letter  of  Shelley  to 
John  Gisborne,  April  10,  1822.  *  Works,  vi.,  108. 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     207 

decide  whether  the  Spaniard's  gift  were  imagi 
nation  or  fancy.  But  what  did  it  matter?  He 
considered  Calderon  a  marvellous  poet  for  all  that. 
His  taste  told  him  so ;  the  ultimate  reason  why  did 
not  matter.  Whether  a  poet  was  great  because 
his  work  was  rich  in  style  or  imagination  or  interest 
was  of  only  secondary  importance  to  Lowell.  The 
primary  consideration  with  him  was  his  impres 
sion;  to  this  he  clung,  however  inadequate  or 
contradictory  his  reasons  in  its  support. 

Before  saying  the  final  word,  it  is  worth  while 
to  take  a  glance  at  Lowell  the  critic  from  the  view 
points  we  have  occupied  in  studying  him.  He  had 
a  wide  knowledge,  gained  from  school  and  college 
and  legal  studies,  from  the  demands  put  upon 
him  in  sanctum  and  classroom,  from  foreign 
travel,  intimate  acquaintance  with  modern  lan 
guages,  enormous  reading,  and  friendship  with 
men  of  culture  and  learning.  He  was  proficient 
in  linguistics  and  held  to  illuminating  principles 
regarding  the  vitality  of  language.  In  his  knowl 
edge  of  art  and  history,  and  in  his  sympathy  for 
science  and  classic  art,  he  was  deficient.  While 
towards  literature  his  sympathy  was  broad  enough 
to  include  almost  all  the  greater  classics  of  various 
languages,  he  was  deficient  in  sympathy  for  the 
•  nineteenth  century  and  regarded  the  fifteenth 
throughout  Europe  as  almost  a  literary  desert. 
His  condemnation  was  evoked  by  sentimentalism, 
by  the  employment  in  poetry  of  Greek  and  medie- 


208  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

val  themes,  by  modern-day  realism.  His  interest 
in  the  drama  and  the  novel  was  of  the  slightest. 
Lowell  seems  honestly  to  have  tried  to  preserve  a 
judicial  attitude  towards  the  subjects  of  his 
critical  essays.  Towards  the  greater  classics, 
especially  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  his  attitude 
became  one  of  frank  encomium.  He  was  subject 
to  enthusiasms  which  often  swept  him  into  over 
statements  of  both  praise  and  blame.  When 
his  devotion  to  an  author  did  not  blind  him  to  his 
defects,  he  struck  a  fair  balance  of  justice,  not  so 
much  by  maintaining  a  coolly  impartial  attitude 
as  by  swinging  pendulum- wise  between  praise  and 
blame.  Lowell  could  never  keep  the  personal 
equation  in  subjection.  So  far  as  taste  belongs 
to  penetration  by  being  that  faculty  which  does 
not  stamp  as  excellent  a  piece  of  literature  which 
is  poor,  Lowell  may  be  said  to  have  possessed 
penetration.  But  his  taste  in  recognizing  an 
excellent  piece  of  literature  was  not  so  sound. 
Considerations  which  should  not  have  weighed 
with  him  made  him  at  times  ignore  or  deny  the 
merit  of  certain  works.  In  so  far  as  penetration  is 
insight  into  the  mind  of  an  author  or  his  art  and 
into  the  ultimate  principles  which  stamp  him  as 
sui  generis  and  explain  him,  Lowell  was  wanting. 
His  taste  was  intuitive.  He  had  to  trust  it  to 
justify  him  without  the  aid  of  radical  principles. 
Porro  unum  est  necessarium.  The  final  gift  whose 
presence,  even  despite  his  deficiencies,  would 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     209 

have  made  him  a  genuine  critic  of  merit,  stamps 
him  by  its  absence  as  merely  an  impressionist. 
What  principles  he  had,  became  more  or  less 
distorted  when  he  endeavored  to  apply  them;  in 
deed  they  always  had  the  air  of  being  extemporized 
for  the  particular  case  under  discussion.  That 
penetration  which  goes  deep  in  a  moment's  flash, 
Lowell  displays  on  occasions.  But  the  sudden 
rending  of  the  veil  seems  as  unexpected  to  him 
as  to  the  reader.  The  knowledge  which  thus 
suddenly  opens  to  his  gaze  is  not  used  to  illumi 
nate  the  whole  man  or  his  work ;  the  critic  seems 
uncertain  how  to  employ  it  and  the  benefit  of 
that  swift  inner  glimpse  is  lost.  It  is  not  unjust  to 
say  of  Lowell  that  penetration  with  him  was  an 
occasional  gift  of  such  insight  as  comes  at  times  to 
most  men  of  imaginative  temperament ;  it  was  not 
a  quality  of  mind. 

The  ultimate  secret  of  Lowell's  weakness  did 
not  lie,  it  is  reasonable  to  maintain,  in  his  own 
power  to  remedy.  It  belonged  to  his  type  of 
mind.  That  precision  in  detail  which  a  classical 
training  might  be  supposed  to  foster  and  whose 
importance  would  be  emphasized  by  the  demands 
upon  him  as  editor  and  professor,  is  for  the  most 
part  wanting.  That  disregard  of  the  unessential, 
that  closeness  of  reasoning,  that  penetration  to 
ultimate  principles,  all  of  which  a  course  of  legal 
training  would  inculcate  in  a  mind  receptive  to 
such  influence,  left  no  perceptible  traces  on  Lowell. 
14 


210  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

His  course  in  law  seems  to  have  fulfilled  no  purpose 
except  that  of  equipping  him  with  legal  phrases 
for  figurative  use.  Porro  unum  est  necessarium. 
Lowell  lacked  philosophical  depth  of  mind,  the 
one  thing  so  necessary  that  without  it  the  total 
of  his  other  endowments  was  inadequate. 

One  difficulty  remains:  if  this  contention  is 
true,  how  are  we  to  account  for  Lowell's  high  place 
as  a  critic?  Without  going  into  a  history  of 
American  criticism,  it  is  fair  to  say  that,  with 
the  exception  of  Lowell,  only  three  critics  among 
his  predecessors  or  contemporaries  demand  con 
sideration,  Foe,  Reed,  and  Whipple.  Reed's 
life  ended  while  he  was  still  a  young  man.  Though 
his  work  indeed  shows  poise  and  though tfulness,  he 
betrays  a  tendency  to  value  literature  for  its 
moral  rather  than  for  its  aesthetic  value.  He  lacks 
the  buoyancy  which  went  so  far  to  make  Lowell 
readable.  Whipple  is  inclined  to  be  heavy-footed ; 
there  is  no  sparkle  in  his  pages.  He  has  a  cer 
tainty  of  tone,  born  doubtless  of  his  success  on  the 
platform,  which  is  not  justified  by  the  precarious- 
ness  of  his  judgments.  Poe  deserves  a  study  by 
himself.  He  had  many  of  the  essential  gifts  of  an 
excellent  critic,  but  was  unfortunate  enough  to 
become  involved  in  literary  bickerings,  and  to 
"give  up  to  party  what  was  meant  for  mankind." 
Much  of  his  work  was  ephemera  critica;  it  perished 
with  the  writings  which  evoked  it.  Lowell 
entered  the  field,  and  with  the  prestige  which 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     211 

belonged  to  him  as  a  poet  and  as  the  academic 
successor  of  Ticknor  and  Longfellow,  wrote  of  the 
masters  of  literature.  Something  of  the  buoyancy 
and  verve  of  the  man  clung  to  his  work.  Here 
were  a  wealth  of  allusion,  a  heightened  rhetoric, 
a  pregnant  homeliness  of  illustration,  and  yet 
withal  something  of  the  air  of  the  Edinburgh  and 
the  Quarterly  domesticated  in  America.  These 
critiques  seemed  to  join  the  literary  traditions  of 
polished  old  England  on  the  one  hand  to  the  eager 
yearning  for  culture  of  crude  New  England  on  the 
other.  Here  was  a  critic,  it  was  thought,  and  a 
poet  and  professor  as  well,  who  might  match  lances 
with  the  critics  over-seas.  New  England  itself,  Bos 
ton,  was  the  centre  of  literary  America  in  Lowell's 
time,  and  the  leaders  in  its  literary  ascendancy 
were  his  friends.  Who  was  there  to  undertake 
the  ungracious  business  of  pointing  out  weak 
nesses  in  his  critical  work?1  Men  who  came  in 
direct  contact  with  him  seem  to  have  found  him 
brilliant  and  charming  in  his  mood.  It  is  not 
hard  to  believe  that  the  sparklirig  cleverness  of 
Lowell  and  the  range  of  allusion  made  possible  by 
his  enormous  reading  and  retentive  memory, 
astonished  as  well  as  delighted  the  men  with  whom 
he  came  closely  in  contact ;  that  their  admiration 
led  them  not  only  to  attribute  to  him  a  depth  of 
mind  which  he  did  not  possess,  but  also  perhaps  to 

1  Severely  critical  articles  appeared  in  Scribner's  Monthly,  iv., 
75.  227,  339,  and  in  Lippincott's  for  June,  1871. 


212  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

believe  they  found  evidences  of  it  in  his  critical 
essays.  To  doubt  it  indeed  might  well  seem 
heresy.  Men  of  a  younger  generation,  no  less 
than  of  his  own,  came  to  know  Lowell  on  familiar 
terms  and  to  their  writings  regarding  him  rather 
than  to  those  of  his  immediate  contemporaries,  is 
due  the  maintenance  of  the  Lowell  tradition. 

It  has  been  said  already  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
probe  into  the  weaknesses  of  a  critic  who  has 
achieved  so  many  quotable  phrases.  Remember 
ing  them  one  is  almost  disarmed.  But  this  quota- 
bility,  what  of  it?  To  read  the  more  recent 
works  in  which  reference  is  made  to  Lowell,  makes 
one  fact  striking:  Lowell's  dicta  are  introduced, 
not  because  they  are  surcharged  with  a  pregnancy 
which  makes  them  an  open  sesame  to  an  author's 
mind  or  art ;  not  because  they  contain  a  luminous 
definition  which  makes  the  elusive  more  nearly 
tangible,  or  crystallizes  what  lurks  too  often  in 
the  realm  of  feeling ;  not,  in  a  word,  for  any  intrinsic 
merit  they  possess  as  criticism  in  a  high  degree, 
but  mainly  for  their  quotability.1  Quotability 
does  not  prove  Lowell  a  great  critic  any  more  than 
it  proves  Pope  a  great  poet.  If  it  were  taken 
as  a  test,  Lowell  might  sit  next  to  Coleridge,  and 
Pope  to  Shakespeare. 

1  "Mere  vividness  of  expression,  such  as  makes  quotable 
passages,  comes  of  the  complete  surrender  of  self  to  the  impres 
sion,  whether  spiritual  or  sensual,  of  the  moment. "  Lowell's 
Works,  iii.,  31. 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  CRITICISM     213 

Can  Lowell  grapple  with  principles  like  Cole 
ridge?  Or  interpret  with  steady  lucidity  and 
consistence  like  Hazlitt?  Or  give  one  that  pecul 
iar  flash  of  insight  by  which  Lamb  illumined  an 
author  not  for  a  moment  but  abidingly?  Can 
he  penetrate  a  problem  in  the  psychology  of  liter 
ature,  like  De  Quincey  in  Knocking  at  the  Gate  in 
Macbeth,  or  achieve  a  pregnant  distinction,  like 
that  between  the  literature  of  knowledge  and  the 
literature  of  power?  Can  he  apply  a  wide-reach 
ing  principle  of  human  significance  like  Carry le, 
who  by  fitting  the  Johnson-Boswell  relation  to 
hero-worship,  revolutionized  forever  the  world's 
opinion  of  Boswell?  Has  he  given  us  criteria 
broad  enough  for  general  application,  like  Arnold 
in  his  description  of  the  grand  style  and  his  defi 
nition  of  poetry?  Has  he  a  command  of  principles 
like  Hutton,  whose  ethical  and  aesthetic  notions 
were  not  constantly  at  the  grapple?  Has  he,  in  a 
word,  given  us  principles  of  wide  application, 
which  may  be  applied  consistently  and  which 
stimulate  the  reader  to  expand>  and  to  modify 
them,  thus  eventually  arriving  at  permanent 
criteria  for  himself? 

It  may  be  objected  that  such  comparisons  and 
such  demands  are  unfair  to  Lowell ;  that  one  ought 
to  accept  him  for  what  he  is.  It  is  the  purpose 
of  this  study  to  endeavor  to  appraise  him  for  what 
he  is  and  candidly  to  inquire  whether  he  belongs 
to  the  ranks  of  critics.  No  conclusions  which  aim 


214  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

to  state  the  real  truth  about  Lowell  are  unfair. 
He  has  been  regarded  as  a  critic ;  in  such  a  light  he 
seems  seriously  to  have  regarded  himself.  But  to 
assign  him  such  a  rank  is  to  do  him  the  injustice 
of  over-estimation.  If  he  would  claim  kinship 
with  Ulysses,  let  him  prove  his  metal  by  bending 
the  hero's  bow. 

If  Lowell  is  to  survive,  it  must  be  frankly  as  an 
impressionist.  For  so  far  as  criticism  approaches 
a  science,  so  far  as  it  depends  to  any  serious  extent 
on  ultimate  principles,  so  far,  in  a  word,  as  it  is 
something  more  fundamental  and  abiding  than 
the  ipse  dixit  of  an  appreciator,  Lowell  is  not  a 
critic. 


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BROOKE,  S.  A.  English  Literature,  New  York  and  London,  1899. 
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London,  1898. 

BURTON,  R.     Literary  Leaders  of  America,  Boston,  1904. 
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COLERIDGE,  S.  T.     Works,  New  York,  1871. 
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New  York,  1906. 

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DE  QUINCEY,  T.     The  Eighteenth   Century,   New  York,    1878. 

—  Literary  Criticism,  New  York,  1878. 
DOWDEN,  E.     Studies  in  Literature,  London,  1878. 
EMERSON,  R.  W.     Works,  Boston  and  New  York,  1903. 
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215 


216  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

FROTHINGHAM,  O.  B.     Transcendentalism  in  New  England,  New 

York,  1876. 
GREENSLET,  F.     James  Russell  Lowell,  Boston  and  New  York, 

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HALE,  E.  E.     James  Russell  Lowell  and  His  Friends,  Boston  and 

New  York,  1899. 

HALE,  E.  E.,  JR.     James  Russell  Lowell,  Boston,  1899. 
HAZLITT,  W.     Works,  London  and  New  York,  1902-04. 
Ho  WELLS,  W.   D.       Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance,   New 

York,  1900. 
HUTTON,  H.  H.      Essays  in    Literary  Criticism,   Philadelphia, 

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JAMES,  H.     Essays  in  London,  New  York,  1893. 
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Specimens  of  Dramatic  Poets,  2  vols.,  London  and  New 

York,  1903. 

LAWTON,  W.  C.     The  New  England  Poets,  New  York,  1898. 
LONGFELLOW,  H.  W.    Hyperion,  Boston  and  New  York,  1899. 
LOWELL,  J.  R.     American  Ideas  for  English  Readers. 

Class  Poem,  Cambridge,  1838. 

Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets,  Cambridge,  1845. 

Early  Writings,  London  and  New  York,  1902. 

Impressions  of  Spain  (Compiled  by  J.  B.  Gilder),  Boston 

and  New  York,  1899. 

Last  Poems,  Boston  and  New  York,  1895. 

Latest  Literary  Essays,  Boston  and  New  York,  1892. 

Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  Cleveland,  1897. 

—  Letters,  2  vols.,  New  York,  1894. 

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—  Old  English  Dramatists,  Boston  and  New  York,  1892. 
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—  Prose  Works,  6  vols.,  Boston  and  New  York,  1896. 
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LOWELL,  MARIA.    Poems,  Cambridge,  1855. 

MACAULAY,  T.  B.     Essays,  Critical,  Historical,  and  Miscellaneous, 

6  vols.,  New  York,  1864. 
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York  and  London,  1863. 


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MEYNELL,  ALICE.    Rhythm  of  Life,  London,  1893. 

NICHOL,  J.     American  Literature,  Edinburgh,  1898. 

OSSILI,  M.  F.      Art,  Literature,  and  the  Drama,  Boston,  1874. 

PATER,  W.     Appreciations,  New  York  and  London,  1895. 

PAYNE,  W.  M.     The  Book  of  American  Literary  Criticism,  New 

York  and  London,  1904. 
POE,  E.  A.     Works,  London,  1884. 
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RICHARDSON,  C.  F.     American  Literature,  2  vols.,  New  York  and 

London,  1887. 
ROBERTSON,  J.    M.      New   Essays   toward   a    Critical   Method, 

London,  1897. 

SAINTE-BEUVE,  C.  A.     Causeries  du  Lundi,  Paris,  1850. 
SAINTSBURY,  G.      History  of  Criticism,  3  vols.,  Edinburgh  and 

London,  1900-04. 
SCUDDER,  H.  E.     James  Russell  Lowell,  Boston  and  New  York, 

1901. 
SHELLEY,  P.  B.     Defense  of  Poetry  (Ed.  A.  S.  Cook),  Boston, 

1903. 
SPINGARN,  J.  E.    Literary  Criticism  of  the  Renaissance,  New 

York  and  London,  1899. 
STEDMAN,   E.  C.    Poets  of  America,  Boston  and   New  York, 

1885. 

STUART,  G.     Essays  from  Reviews,  Quebec,  1892. 
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TAYLOR,  B.     Critical  Essays,  New  York,  1880. 
THOREAU,    H.       Walden,    2    vols.,    Boston    and    New    York, 

1897. 

TRENT,  W.  T.     American  Literature,  New  York,  1903. 
UNDERWOOD,  F.  H.     James  Russell  Lowell,  Boston,  1882. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  Poet  and  Man,  Boston,  1893. 

WATSON,  W.     Excursions  in  Criticism,  London  and  New  York, 

1893- 
WENDELL,  B.     Literary  History  of  America,  New  York,  1900. 

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Boston,  1898. 

WILKINSON,  W.  C.     A  free  Lance,  New  York,  1874. 
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2i 8  LOWELL  AS  A  CRITIC 

WORDSWORTH,  W.    Literary  Criticism,  London,  1905. 

Academy,  7:  271. 
-40:  155- 

Andover  Review,  16:  294. 

Athenaum,  '91,  2:  257. 

Atlantic  Monthly,  90:  862. 

Blackwood's,  150:  454. 

California  University  Chronicle,  8:  352. 

Catholic  World,  23:  14. 

Chautauqua,  16:  554. 

Contemporary  Review,  60:  477. 

Critic,  16:  91. 

19:  82,  92,  291. 

Current  Literature,  42:  410. 

Ztetf,  45:  157. 

Eclectic  Magazine,  32:  410. 
Edinburgh  Review,  174:  377. 

Fortnightly  Review,  44:  79. 

Forum,  12:  141. 

Gentlemen's  Magazine,  249:  464,  544. 
Harper's,  86:  846. 
International  Review,  4:  264. 
Lippincott's,  7:  641. 
-50:534 

56:717 

62:  252. 

Literary  World,  16:217,  225. 

22:  290. 

Living  Age,  195:  416. 
Nation,  10:  258. 

—  12:  128. 

Nineteenth  Century,  17:  988. 
Afor/ft  American  Review,  153:  460. 
Afor^  British  Review,  46:  472. 

Publication  of  Modern  Language  Ass'n  of  America,  Vol.  VII, 
Review  of  Reviews,  4:  291. 
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73:255. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  219 

Scribner's,  15:  186. 
Spectator,  58:  744. 

-66:693. 

-67:215. 
Unitarian  Review,  36:  436. 

NOTE:  An  extensive  bibliography  of  articles  by  Lowell,  only 
some  of  which  have  been  republished  (in  the  Round  Table, 
Boston,  1913),  is  given  in  the  appendix  to  Scudder's  biography 
of  Lowell. 


INDEX 


Abra,  Prior's,  67 

Absalom     and     Achitophel, 

Dryden's,  55,  145 
Addison,  Joseph,  56,  180 
^Elfric,  182 
^Eschylus,  44,  45,  96 
Agamemnon,  Browning  s,  91 
Agassiz,  Louis,  39 
Among  My  Books,  Lowell's  25 
Angelo,  Michael,  50,  74 
Anne,  Queen,  71 
Annus     Mirabilis,     Dryden's, 

153 

Anthologia  Graeca,  42 

Anti-Slavery  Standard,  15 

Antony  and  Cleopatra,  127 

Ariel  (in  Tempest),  189 

Ariosto,  79 

Aristophanes,  44,  45 

Aristotle,  43,  82 

Arnold,  Matthew,  93,  no,  148, 
149,  155,  156,  157,  160,  161, 
162,  205,  213 

Arnolfo,  83 

"Assumption,"  (of  Titian),  74 

Astraa  Redux,  Dryden's,  153 

Atalanta  in  Calydon,  Swin 
burne's,  92,  170 

Atlantic  Monthly,  23,  24,  30, 

Aurora  Leigh,  Browning's,  100 
Austen,  Jane,  169 

B 

Ballads,  19 
Ballads,  Percy's,  56 


Balzac,  Honore",  53,  99 
"Band,  The,"  5,  17 
Barbour,  John,  54 
Barnfield,  Richard,  67 
Beatrice  (in  Divina  Commedia), 

113,  154,  179 
Beauclerc,  Topham,  117 
Beaumont   and   Fletcher,   64, 

95 

Beers,  H.  A.,  194 

Bells     and     Pomegranates, 
Browning's,  90 

Bernard,  Charles  de,  53,  99 

Berners,  Baron  (translator  of 
Froissart),  165 

Biglow  Papers,  Lowell's,  15, 16, 
24,  37,  64 

Biographia    Literana,    Cole 
ridge's,  87 

Birds,  Aristophanes',  96 

Blackstone's  Commentaries,  4 

Blaine,  James  G.,  27 

Boccaccio,   Giovanni,   50,   77 

79,  "3 

Boileau,  Nicolas,  42,  58 
Bonstetten,  Charles  Victor  de, 

1 60,  1 86' 
Books  and  Libraries,  Lowell  s, 

97 

Boston  Courier,  15 
Boston  Miscellany,  8,   n,   12, 

13,30,31,  i".  HO 
Boswell,  James,  33,  213 
Bothie,  Clough's,  89 
Bremer,  Frederika,  178 
Briggs,    Charles    F.,    14,    *7, 

158 

Bright,  John,  29 
Broadway  Journal,  14 


221 


222 


INDEX 


Browning,  E.  B.,  100 
Browning,  Robert,  90,  91,  93 
Brunelleschi,  Filippo,  83 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  16 
Bunyan,  John,  60,  182 
Burke,     Edmund,     103,     117, 

121,  182,  183 
Burlington,  Lord,  181 
Burns,  Robert,  112,  190 
Butler,  Samuel,  19 
Byron,   Lord,  35,   52,  87,  88, 

112,   IQO 


Calderon  de  la  Barca,  51,  78, 

loo,  141,  206,  207 
Caliban  (in  Tempest),  189 
Cambridge   Thirty    Years  Ago, 

Lowell's,  3 
Cambridge  University,  26,  27, 

68,96 

Canovas  del  Castillo,  158 
Canzoni,  Dante's,  82 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  4,  53,  6 1,  62, 

71,  80,   103,   123,   125,   127, 

133,  Hi,  H2,  143,  155,  159, 
167,  179,  189,  213 
Cathedral,  Lowell's,  73,  194 
Catullus,  46 
Cavalcanti,  Guido,  155 
Cenci,  Shelley's,  104 
Century  Magazine,  93 
Cervantes,  29,  51,  78 
Chamberlain,  Joseph,  29 
Chansons  de  Geste,  132 
Chapman,  George,  8,  n,  138 
Charles  II.,  69,  153 
Chastelard,  Swinburne's,  92 
Chateaubriand,  Viscount,  101 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  u,  19,  20, 
45,  49,   52,   54,  55,   56,   57, 
66,  68,  78,  81,  83,  85,  112, 
H3,     127,    130,     132,    137, 
140,     141,     142,     146,     151, 
152,     162,     163,     164,     165, 
166,  169,  170,  181 


Chaucer,     Lowell's,     69,     130, 

132,  171 
Cicero,  63 
Cid,  The,  27,  98 
Cimabue,  Giovanni,  83 
Cinna,  Corneille's,  49 
Claude  Lorrain,  74 
Clough,  A.  H.,  89,  93 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  29, 

59,  60,  61,  87,  107,  163,  212, 

213 

Coleridge,  Lowell's,  168 
Collier,  Jeremy,  114 
Collins,  William,  13 
Confessio    Amantis,    Gower's, 

105 

Confessions  of  Rousseau,  120 
Congreve,  William,  95 
Conversations   on  Some   of  the 

Old  Poets,  Lowell's,  u,  12, 

J3,  19,  30,  31,  88,  in,  122, 

127,  140 

Convito,  Dante's,  82,  154 
Cooper,  James,  F.,  16,  97 
Corneille,  Pierre,  49,  63,  79, 

153 

Cowley,  Abraham,  60,  153 
Cowper,  William,  13 
Criseyde    (in     Troilus    and 

Criseyde],  141 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  69,  153 
Curtis,  George  William,  39 
Cynewulf,  182 


D 


Dane  Law  School,  4 

Daniel,  Samuel,  54 

Dante,  23,  35,  47,  49,  50,  52, 
71,  74,  77,  78,  79,  81,  82, 
83,  85,  92,  96,  113,  129, 
130,  141,  146,  151,  153, 
154,  155,  179,  208 

Dante,  Lowell's,  78,  130,  131, 

153 
David    Copperfield,    Dickens', 

97,  98,  169 
Decameron,  Boccaccio's,  50 


INDEX 


223 


Dekker,  Thomas,  66 
Democracy,  Lowell  on,  39 
De  Monarchic,,  Dante's,  82 
Denis,  John,  123 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  60,  204, 

205, 213 
De    Vulgari  Eloquio,   Dante  s, 

82,  154 

Dickens,  Charles,  97,  98,  169 
Digby,  Lady  Venetia,  75 
Digby,  Sir  Kenelm,  75 
Dilke,  Charles,  29 
Divina     Commedia,     Dante's, 

82,  129,  137,  154 
Dodsley,  Robert,  56 
Donne,  John,  66 
Don   Quixote,   Cervantes',   23, 

27,  29,  50,  98 

Don  Sebastian,  Dryden  s,  63 
Dorothea     (in     James     IV.), 

142 
Double    Marriage,    Beaumont 

and  Fletcher's,  64 
Douglas,  Gawain,  54 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  68 
Dramatists  of  the  Restoration, 

Macaulay's,  69 
Drayton,  Michael,  54 
Dryden,  John,  49,  52,  55,  56, 

58,  59,  63,  64,  65,  69,  80, 

81,84,85,97,  114,  133,  HO, 

144,    145,    150,     151,     153, 

169,  177,  202 
Dryden,  Lowell's,  57,  69,  95, 

132,  144,  150,  153 
Dunbar,  Battle  of,  69 
Dunbar,  William,  54 
Dunciad,  Pope's,  86,  100 
Dunlop,  Frances,  22,  36 
Durer,  Albert,  74 
Duty,  Wordsworth's,  141 
D wight,  Timothy,  13 


E 


Early  Writings,  Lowell's,  12 
"Edelmann  Storg, "  3 


Eliot,  George,  98,  169 
Elizabethans,  66,  88,  90,  95, 

127 
Elizabethan  Dramatists,  8,  9, 

12,  30,    140,    169,   172,   182 
Elizabethan  England,  68 
Elizabethan  Stage,  57 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  68 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  3,  4,  6,    16, 

23,  38,  39,  93,  125,  167 
Endymion,  Keats',  103,  157 
Essay    on     Criticism,    Pope's, 

86 

Essay  on  Man,  Pope's,  86 
Euclid,  146 

Euripides,  45,  47,  96,  100 
Excursion,  Wordsworth's,  13 


Fable  for  Critics,  A,  Lowell's, 
10,  15,  16,  201 

Faery  Queen,  Spenser's,  3,  131 

Falkland,  Viscount,  69 

Falstaff  (in  Henry  IV.),  67, 
98 

Ferdinand  (in  Tempest},  189 

Fielding,  Henry,  29,  56,  96, 
99,  100,  168,  169,  186 

Fielding,  Lowell's,  97,  116, 
1 68 

Fields,  James,  T.,  22,  24 

Fletcher,  John,  64,  95 

Ford,  John,  8,  11,31,  103 

Forster,  John,  179, 

Francesca  (in  Divina  Com 
media),  130,  179 

Francis,  St.  (of  Assisi),  71 

Frederick  the  Great,  71,  75, 

124,  143 

Freeman,  see  under  Penn 
sylvania 

French    Revolution,    Carlyle's, 

143 

Friar  Bacon,  Greene  s,  141 
Frobisher,  Sir  Martin,  68 
Fuller,  Margaret,  10,  15 


224 


INDEX 


Gascoigne,    George,    54,  104, 

176 

Ghiberti,  Lorenzo,  83 
Giotto,  83 
Globe  Theatre,  68 
Goethe,  J.  W.,  48,  52,  53,  79, 

112,     179,     181,     190,     206 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  13,  56 
Gower,  John,  54,  105,  177 
Gray,    Thomas,    56,   90,    158, 

160,     161,     195,     196,     197 
Gray,  Lowell's,   56,    134,    176, 

202 

Greene,  Robert,  105,  141 
Greenslet,  P.,  4 


H 


Hakluyt,  Richard    (Voyages}, 

42 

Halliwell,  J.  O.,  68,  177 
Hamlet,  174 
Hamlet,  108,  128,  174 
Harvardiana,  3 
Harvard  University,  3,  27,  37, 

42,50 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  16 
Hayes,  R.  B.,  27 
Hazlitt,  W.   C.,   67,   68,    no, 

178 

Hazlitt,  William,  60,  213 
Heath,  J.  P.,  7 
Heine,  H.,  48 
Henry   Esmond,    Thackeray's, 

97 

Herbert,  George,  13 
Heywood,  Thomas,  67 
Higginson,      Thomas     Went- 

worth,  3 
Hind  and  Panther,  Dry  den's, 

145 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  15,  16,  23,  158 
Homer,  43,  45,  67,  77,  96 
Hopkins,  John,  105 
Horace,  46,  78 
Houghton,  Lord,  156 


Howells,  W.  D.,  23,  98,  99 
Hughes,  Thomas,  26 
Hugo,  Victor,  53 
Hume,  David,  42 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  146,  147,  148, 
H9,  213 


Ibsen,  Henrik,  99 

Idylls  of  the  King,  Tennyson's, 

90,  104,  171 
Iliad,  45,  100,  132 
Impressions  of  Spain,  Lowell's, 

158 

Innocent  III.,  71 
Intimations    of     Immortality, 

Wordsworth's,  141 
Iphigenie,  Goethe's,  52 
Irving,  Washington,  27 
Isabella,  Keats',  104 
Ivanhoe,  Scott's,  171 


James,  Henry,  98 

James  IV.,  Greene's,  105,  141 

Jane  Eyre,  Charlotte  Bronte" 's, 

98 

Jane  Shore,  Rowe's,  95 
John  of  Northampton,  113 
Johnson,    Life    of,    Boswell's, 

33 

Johnson,  Samuel,  62,  117,  121, 
182, 213 


K 


Keats,  George,  156 

Keats,  John,  52,  53,  59,  87, 
139,  141,  146,  155,  156,  157, 
170 

Keats,  Lowell's,  57,  87,  157 

Kent's  Commentaries,  5 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  33 

Knocking  at  the  Gate  in  Mac 
beth,  De  Quincey's,  213 


INDEX 


225 


Lamb,  Charles,  60,  213 
Landor,  W.  S.,  53,  93,  94,  103, 

178 

Langland,  William,  54 
Laodamia,  Wordsworth's,  104, 

141 

Laura  (Petrarch's),  109 
Lear,  20,  67 
Leaves     from    my    Journal, 

Lowell's,  3 
Lectures  on  the  English  Poets, 

Lowell's,  21,  200,  201 
Legend    of   Brittany,  Lowell's, 

103 
Lessing,  G.  E.,  62,  79,  81,  175, 

178,  179 

Lessing,  Lowell's,  161 
Library  of  Old  Authors,  64,  66, 

109 

Limberham,  Dryden's,  58,  114 
Literary  Friends  and  Acquaint 
ance,  Howell's,  38 
London  Daily  News,  15 
Longfellow,    H.    W.,    21,    23, 

78,  104,  211 
Lowell,  Blanche,  14 
Lowell  Institute,  18,  30,  in 
Lowell,    Maria,    18     (see    also 

White,  Maria) 
Lowell,  Mrs.  Charles,  2,  33 
Lowell,  Rebecca,  10 
Lowell,  Rev.  Charles,  I,  2,  33 
Lucan,  46,  47 
Lucretius,  46,  78 
Lyrical  Ballads,  Wordsworth's, 

59 


M 


Macaulay,  Thomas  B.,  11,67, 

69,f73,  ioi 
Maid's     Tragedy,     Beaumont 

and  Fletcher's,  172 
Malebolge  (Inferno),  155 
Malherbe,  Frangois  de,  28 
Mansfield  Park,  Austen's,  97 


Marie  de  France,  49 
Marlborough,  Duke  of,  71 
Marston,  Halliwell's,  177 
Marston  Moor,  Battle  of,  69 
Massinger,  Philip,  8 
Masson,  David,  55,  66,  68,  69, 

109 

Maud,  Tennyson's,  90 
Maximilian,  Emperor,  75 
Mercedes,  Queen,  28 
Meredith,  George,  98 
Merope,  Arnold's,  93,  170,  206 
Metrical  Romances,  19 
Middlemarch,  Eliot's,  169 
Midsummer     Night's     Dream, 

Shakespeare's,  95,  127 
Milton,  John,  13,  19,  42,  52, 

53,  55,  56,  59,  66,  69,  70,  71, 

77,  84,  85, 108,  109, 130,  131, 

132,  136,  141,  153,  186,  193 
Miranda  (in  Tempest),  189 
Mitchell,  S.  Weir,  33 
Modern      Italian      Literature, 

Howell's,  98 
Moliere,  44 

Montaigne,  63,  139,  183 
Montrose,  Marquis  of,  69 
Montgomery,  Macaulay's,  101 
Moore,  Thomas,  101,  117,  118, 

182 
Moosehead   Journal,   Lowell's, 

196 

Moral  Essays,  Pope's,  86 
Morris,  William,  91 
Motley,  John  L.  27 
My  Study  Windows,  Lowell's, 

25 


Napoleon,  72,  146 

Nation,  179 

Newcomes,  Thackeray's,  169 

Newman,  J.  H.,  112 

New    Testament  (Tyndale's), 

165 
New   Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts, 

Massinger 's,  172 


226 


INDEX 


Nicholas,  Sir  Harris,  113 
Nooning,     The,    Lowell's,    17, 

37 

North    American    Review,    24, 

25,  37,  48,  86,  98 
Norton,  Charles  E.,  24,  46,  50, 

73,  78,  106 
Novum  Organon,  Bacon  s,  108 


Odyssey,  45,  100 

Old     English     Dramatists, 

Lowell's,  30,  140 
Old  Plays,  Dodsley's,  56 
Old  Wives1  Tale,  Peele's,  105 
Our  Own,  Lowell's,  40 
Ovid,  46,  47,  78,  96 
Oxford  University,  26,  29,  68 


Pamela,  Richardson's,  96 
Peele,  George,  105 
Pennsylvania  Freeman,  13,  14 
Percival,  101 

Percy,  Bishop  Thomas,  56 
Peter  Bell,  Wordsworth's,  61 
Petrarch,  35,  50,  77,  79,  96, 

1 02,  109 

Phelps,  Edward  JM  30 
Pierce,  Franklin,  158 
Pilgrim's  Progress,   Banyan's, 

60 

Pioneer,  The,  9,  13 
Pisani,  83 

Plain  Dealer,  Wycherly's,  95 
Plato,  43 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  16,  38,  210 
Pope,    Alexander,    2,    12,    19, 

49,  52,  55,  56,  58,  77,  80, 

86,87,95,  100,  115,  121,  122, 

123,     127,     133,     169,     180, 

182,  204,  205,  212 

Pope,   Lowell's,    58,    85,    121, 

133,  r38 

Prefaces,  Wordsworth's,  59 
"Presentation  of  the  Virgin," 

Titian's,  74 


Pretender     (James    Francis 

Edward  Stuart),  70,  71 
Pride  and  Prejudice,  Austen's, 

97 

Primrose,    Dr.    (in    Vicar    of 

Wakefield),  2 
Princess,  Tennyson's,  89 
Progress  of  the  World,  Lowell's, 

72 

Prospero  (in  Tempest),  61,  189 
Putnam's  Magazine,  40,  158 
Putnam,  Mr.,  6 


Racine,  79 

Rape  of  the  Lock,  Pope's,  86, 

122,   127,  133 

Recent  Italian  Comedy,  How- 
ell's,  98 

Reed,  Henry,  210 

Relapse,  Vanbrugh's,  58 

Renaissance,  43 

Restoration,  58,  70,  71,  95 

Restoration  Comedy,  169 

Review  of  American  Literature, 
Fuller's,  10,  15 

Richard  II,  Shakespeare's,  197 

Richardson,  Samuel,  96,  168, 
169 

Richter,  Jean  Paul,  48 

Roman  de  la  Rose,  49 

Romeo  (in  Romeo  and  Juliet) ,  68 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  92 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  49,  62,  79,  81, 
88,  101,  103,  115,  117,  118, 
119,  120,  121,  123,  125,  142, 
159,  160,  168,  179,  181,  182, 
190 

Rousseau,  Lowell's,  96,  Tip, 
133,  159,  168 


Saint  Andrews,  University  of, 

29 
Sainte-Beuve,  49,  53,  134,  !35» 

151,     152,     153,     155,     r6o, 

180 


INDEX 


227 


Samson    Agonistes,     Milton's, 

52 

Satires,  Pope's,  86 
"Saturday  Club,"  23 
Savage,  Richard,  117,  182 
Schiller,  Johann  von,  48,  163 
School  for  Scandal,  Sheridan's, 

95 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  33,  42,  97, 
169,  171 

Scudder,  Horace,  97 

Shakespeare,  12,  31,  43,  44,  45, 
5i,  52,  53,  54,  55,  56,  57,  58, 
60,  61,  66,  67,  74,75,77,  78, 
79,  81,  84,  85,  96,  108,  114, 
118,126,  127,  128,  129,  140, 
141,  142,  153,  162,  163,  164, 
169,  172,  177,  183,  190,  191, 
192,  203,  206,  208,  212 

Shakespeare,  Lowell's,  61,  68, 

69,  95,  131,  132,  151,  189 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  88,  112 

Sheridan,  R.  B.,  95 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  Gold 
smith's,  95 

Shylock  (in  Merchant  of  Ven 
ice),  68 

Sidney,  Algernon,  70,  71 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  54 

Silent  Woman,  Jonson's,  172 

Sir  Launfal,  Lowell's,  103 

Skelton,  John,  175 

Smollett,  Tobias,  42 

Song  of  Roland,  132 

Sophocles,  45 

Sordello,  Browning's,  90 

Southey,  Robert,  42 

Spence  family,  I 

Spens,  Sir  Patrick,  I 

Spenser,  Edmund,  3,  19,  40, 
54,  55,  56,  60,  84,  85,  in, 
130,  131,  133,  137,  140,  141, 
150,  163,  169,  203,  206 

Spenser,  Lowell's,  150 

Spinoza,  82 

Stael,  Mme.  de,  13 

St.  Cecelia's  Day,  Dryden's 
H5 


Stephano  (in  Tempest),  189 
Sterne,  Laurence,  56,  107 
Sternhold,  Thomas,  105 
Stewart,  Dugald,  i 
Stillman,  W.  J.,  19 
Story,  W.  W.,  3 
Strabo,  112 

Stuart,    James,  see    Pretender 
Surrey,  Earl  of,  54,  104 
Swift,  Forster's,  "179 
Swift,  Jonathan,  100,  123,  179 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  53,  92,  100, 
103 


Tacitus,  46 

Tasso,  35,  79 

Tempest,  Shakespeare's,  95, 
189 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  89,  93,  104 

Terence,  42 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  97,  98,  169 

Theobald,  Lewis,  123 

Theocritus,  43 

Thoreau,  Henry,  3,  7,  16,  23, 
39,  53,  102,  125,  126,  139, 
142,  143,  179,  203 

Thoreau,  Lowell's,  125 

Ticknor,  George,  211 

Tilden,  Samuel,  27 

Titian,  74,  75 

Tom  Jones,  Fielding's,  99 

"Tribute  Money,"  Titian's,  74 

Troilus  and  Criseyde,  Chaucer's 
141,  171* 

Troubadours,  54 

Trouveres,  54 

Turner,  William,  75 

Turner's  Old  Temeraire,  Low 
ell's,  72 

Tyler,  John,  25 

Tyler,  Wat,  152 

Tyndale,  William  165,  166 

U 
Unwin,  Mrs.,  13 


228 


INDEX 


Valdes,  A.  P.,  99 
Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  58 
Van  Dyke,  Sir  Anthony,  75 
Vanity  Fair,  Thackeray's,  97 
Vega,  Lope  de,  51 
Venice  Preserved,  Otway's,  95 
Venus     and     Adonis,    Shake 
speare's,  1 66 
Victorian  Poets,  89 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  146 
Virgil,  45,  46,  78 
Vision    of    Piers    Ploughman, 

Langland's,  19 
Vita  Nuova,  Dante's,  82,  154 
Voltaire,  49,  52,  58,  128 

W 

Wace,  49 

Walden,  Thoreau's,  102 
Wallenstein,  Coleridge's  trans 
lation  of,  107 
Waller,  Edmund,  100 
Walton,  Isaac,  13 


Way  of  the  World,  Congreve's, 

95 

Webster,  Daniel,  4,  37 
Webster,  John,  8 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  71 
Wells,  William,  3 
Westminster  Abbey,  29 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  210 
White,  Maria,  5,  II,  36,  37 
Whittier,  John  G.,  16,  23 
Willis,  Nathaniel,  10 
Wordsworth,  William,  13,  19, 

29,  52,  53,  59,  6c,  61,  87, 

104,  131,  137,  141,  146,  147, 

148,    149,     151,    177,     184, 

206 
Wordsworth,  Lowell's,  57,  87, 

in 

Workingmen's  College,  108 
Wuthering      Heights,      Emily 

Bronte's,  98 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  54,  104 
Wycherly,  William,  95 


Year's  Life,  A,  Lowell's,  8,  10 


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